Still Aging.............

.........but not blogging about it just yet.

As we all know too well, time flies, and its been an astonishing 6 1/2 years since I last delved into my mundane aging issues.  Much has changed on all fronts.

One such change............................a wife!

 I hope to return soon.

Jack

UPDATE--July 29, 2017: This post is written about an actual person, but his name is not Jack.  I don't know if the real Jack has ever read this, but I am no longer comfortable speaking so critically of him in such a public forum.  He probably is still an insensitive jerk, but I no longer wish to be one also.

The original post with names changed to protect all jerks follows:

I recently went out for dinner and drinks with a group of people most of whom I went to grammar and/or high school with. It was a rather odd mixture of people for various reasons that I will perhaps ruminate upon at another time, but what struck me was how everyone was aging in such different ways. There was graying, balding, plumping (a lot), wrinkling, sagging and even some transcendence into being distinguished looking (which didn’t apply to the women. Does it ever?) Oh, did I mention widening? (Our group actually couldn’t be seated in a booth because we didn’t fit. Really!)

But there was one person who stood out in my mind: Jack. First off, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not protecting his identity by leaving off his last name. Everybody knows Jack simply as Jack. He and his lifetime antics have so stood out amongst the people who know and know of him that his last name is no longer needed. He is now just “Jack.”

Jack and I were close friends in junior high and high school, often hanging out together and playing sports. It was easy since we lived about 100 yards apart and both had a strong affinity for sports and being obnoxious. We even went to our high school prom together (with our long-time girlfriends of course.) However Jack and I began to grow apart after going to different colleges, and the fissure was completed during a very unpleasant two weeks when Jack came to stay with me and my girlfriend in LA where I was spending the summer as a law intern. (This was a different girlfriend than the one I took to prom—that one was in the process of becoming a lesbian. And NO! I didn’t feel responsible for her new predilection.) Unbeknownst to me, Jack had become a full-fledged coke fiend by this time and was simply unbearable to be around.

But this isn’t about our long ago boyhood friendship or its deterioration. Rather it’s all about Jack--just as he likes it—and his lifelong odyssey with drugs and the effect they may have had on him physically. I have no idea what quantity of drugs have passed through his system, but suffice it to say that it was enough to lead him to commit a variety of felonies, spend time in jail, lose his professional drivers license and means of earning a living, pimp out his girlfriend(s) and spend who knows how many months in the hospital as his body broke down.

But to Jack’s credit and in spite of the abuse he put his body through, Jack actually became more handsome as he aged. He went from being a good-looking 20-something guy to being George Clooney-handsome in his 30’s. It seems that no matter what Jack did or regardless of how much his health suffered as a result of his vices, Jack looked great. And since he spent most of his money on drugs instead of food, Jack also lost a great deal of weight and looked Hollywood-lean. No gym, vitamins or plastic surgery for Jack. His secret was physical self-abuse via drug addiction.

I saw Jack on and off through most of his forties and he somehow maintained his Clooney looks. But fairy tales don’t really exist do they. A few years ago Jack came to town and we arranged the usual get-together whereby anyone with nothing better to do would meet up and spend a day or evening listening to Jack tell us that he was finally straight and planned to do this or that or something that we had been told who knows how many times in the past. But while the staging and script were pretty much the same, this time the actor had changed. “Jack Clooney” had been replaced by Hans Moleman (the hard-luck, though equally tough to kill character from the Simpsons.) Jack was now a little old man, slightly hunched over and with too-thick glasses that enlarged his eyes ala Mr. Magoo.

The fact that everyone loses their looks as they age is certainly no secret, and is another one of those painful aspects of aging which demands an ever increasing amount of self-delusion to deal with. Personally, I have never been comfortable with my limited ability to self-delude. When I look in the mirror, my mind’s eye doesn’t see me as I looked when I was 25 or any other better-looking time; I simply now see myself as a 50 year-old guy. And though on a good day I’m still able to pass for 48, I realize that the day will come when I wake up, look in the mirror and am steamrolled by the realization that I look OLD. (Hmm, maybe the Magoo-vision is actually an adaptive mechanism crafted by humans over the ages to give a much-needed assist in deceiving ourselves.)

But hey, I don’t look as old as Jack, and in fact I was carded yesterday while buying beer at Jewel. Carded! Yes, me. I must say I was feeling pretty good as I started to walk out of the store, a 12 pack of the new Goose Island Ale in hand. But my delusion of youth quickly faded as I noticed that the sign that used to say “we card under 35” now simply read……”we card EVERYONE.”

Denial, Delusion, and Dilbert...OH MY!

Scott Adams, the creator of my favorite strip, Dilbert, also turned 50 recently. Here's a comment from his blog......."When I was 20, I wondered what it would be like to be 50. None of my guesses were close. I assumed that “aging” was automatically bad, so I didn’t look forward to it. No one told me that having more friends and fewer zits would feel like a good tradeoff. And if you told me I could have my twenty-year old body again, but I had to take my twenty-year old brain with it, I’d pass."
Hmmm, I'm not so sure I'd also "pass" on my 20 year old body, but of course, I may simply be delusional now about what my 20 year old mind was actually like then. Would you go back and redo things knowing you're going to make the same stupid mistakes and have the same painful experiences?

I am 50!

Well, it finally happened--I turned 50. In all honesty though, it was really quite anti-climactic as I feel no different now than I did a month or year ago. If you’re wondering what I did to celebrate, nothing much really; I played baseball that night and had some beer and a cigar after the game. The only real difference was I also had some delicious homemade bday cake courtesy of my resident baker, Dyan, and got to show off Bobble-Mike (also courtesy of Dyan.) Yes, I now have my own baseball bobblehead, as if anyone needed any further proof that I truly am my own child.

....in the meantime..........

For those of you who have graciously come back, I'm sorry to inform you that I haven't written anything new for awhile. Though I have a bunch of ideas, I haven't been able to turn any of them into something I like and consider reflective of my irreverance.

So for the time being, I have resorted to showing pictures of scantily clad women. I'm not proud of utilizing this cheap tactic, but apparently it doesn't bother any of my guy readers..............go figure.

It's just like REAL baseball.....

Though I have played golf on and off, mostly off, during my life, I don’t consider myself a golfer and never have. I don’t like the game and can’t even bring myself to call it a sport. It’s often times boring, ridiculously expensive and many people who play take themselves way too seriously. (For them to think that anyone cares how they played a particular shot during one unforgettable round on some hole or other is simply unimaginable to me. I’ve always thought that golfers pretend to listen to these anecdotes simply because they hope to build up credit with others so they too will pretend to listen to their incessant relating of forgettable golf shots. After all, no one else, whether in their right mind or not, could stand to listen to these stories without some compensation. Which brings up an idea for someone considering a new career: golf prostitute. These people would be paid to listen to golf stories and pretend to be interested and amused. I didn’t say it was a good career, just a new one. )


Nonetheless, and yes I am finally getting to my point, I always planned to “take up” golf when I got older. Tennis too. After all, most of my friends play golf and have been doing so for decades and seem to really enjoy it. I always assumed I’d join them some day even though my real interest remained drinking beer and driving the cart. But here I am, approaching 50 and I am no closer to taking up golf than to dressing in women’s clothing. Okay, maybe a little closer than that, but you get my drift. So does this mean I’m not “older” yet? Sadly no, I’m there alright.

The main reason I still haven’t taken up golf is simple; men’s baseball. You see I still play baseball and continue to be able to satisfy both my need for competition as well as my desire to continue playing a real sport I love and which reconnects me to my childhood. In hindsight, its clear that my expectation from decades ago was simply wrong; that I would no longer be playing baseball, basketball or anything of the kind at this age, and I would be stuck with choosing between inactivity and something that old people play like golf. But thanks to the intrepid and self-gratifying nature of the boomer generation I am not only still playing baseball, but playing more than I ever did when younger; last season playing in over 100 games.


A brief history.
Men’s baseball is another of those many ideas that in hindsight is obvious, but as fellow player and men’s baseball pioneer Dave Schultz says “came along right ‘when it was supposed to’ aimed at boomers, the first generation that prioritized fun and recreation for themselves and had the time and money to go for it.” While there is some controversy over the origins of the current adult baseball phenomenon, my understanding is that it was an outgrowth of the Randy Hundley fantasy baseball camps* which first began in 1983 in Arizona. The concept was simple: a bunch of grown men (or perhaps more accurately, children in grown men’s bodies) donned Cubs uniforms and were given some basic instruction by childhood heroes such as Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ernie Banks, and then went out and played baseball. Magic was created, and having had their baseball spirits revived, a group of Chicago area guys proceeded to start playing hardball again. It wasn’t long before this simple idea was taken national and leagues began to be created everywhere with the first Chicago area league being formed in 1987. According to the Chicago North Men’s Senior Baseball website (http://www.cnmsbl.com/), there were four teams; the Condors, Naturals, Redbirds and the Stars. From these humble beginnings the league has now grown to include 4 age divisions-25 and over, 35 and over, 45 and over and 55 and over-with over 40 teams and 600 players. Nationally, men’s baseball has experienced similar exponential growth. According to the national MSBL website there are approximately 3200 teams and 45,000 players, many of whom participate in the 30 regional and 6 national tournaments. Little league indeed.

Almost 20 years from the time I began playing hardball again, I still reply disdainfully to those who dare ask,”oh you play softball?” Grrrrrrrrr. For anyone who remains doubtful, we play HARDBALL. There may be a few extra rules to accommodate the realities of playing as middle-aged men such as liberal pinch running rules, but for the most part this is baseball, pure and simple, played for the same reasons as when we played as kids. Why people find it so incredible or even surprising that I still play baseball is surprising in and of itself to me. After all, there have been numerous instances of professional players playing well into their 40’s with one legendary player, Satchel Paige, allegedly playing pro ball until he was 60. Currently, the oldest active player is Julio Franco who will be 49 this season and of course eligible to play in our 45 and over division. Perhaps the surprised and amused reactions from most people are because they still think of baseball as a kid’s game. And maybe it is and always will be, and just maybe that’s why so many of us hang onto it for so long. For if you were to come and watch us play, you’d quickly realize that there truly is a hidden force that compels us to fight through injury, incapacitation and the never ending nagging of spouses to come out and play baseball.

The best way I have been able to describe what we do is this: it’s just like real baseball, except played in slow motion. And to the many of you out there who remain curious and wonder whether you can still play, my advice is to put away those golf sticks and take a few swings at a ball that’s still moving when you try to hit it. Golf will always be there when you’re older; and I promise that one day I’ll join you, so long as I get to drive the cart.

* My deceased friend Mitch Levey was the first person I knew to go to the Cubs fantasy camp. During his brief life he often was a trendsetter, including his ultimate act of defiant trendsetting when he preceded all of us out death’s door at the age of 32 leaving all these musings, concerns and headaches about aging to others.
The picture above was taken in 1993 at the annual Mitchell Levey Foundation golf tournament; my batting glove helped me win the game with a score at least 20 points higher than everyone else.

Whaddya live in a cave?!

Last week I went out with a group of friends to celebrate, yes you’ve got it, someone’s 50th birthday. Actually two somebodies as these friends, Tom and Greg, were born just hours apart. While we drank good alcohol from around the world, gorged on a dozen different kinds of beef and meat products at the fine Brazilian steakhouse, Fogo de Chao, and then stuffed ourselves with Dyan’s home-baked cookies and other rich deserts, someone else we all know, not personally, but know OF, was also spending his birthday somewhere. Osama bin Laden turned 50 on the day we all went out, March 10th, and I couldn’t help but be struck by the irony of the situation and also wonder how he was spending this milestone day. Somehow I doubt he was feasting, celebrating or even drinking anything beyond some lukewarm tea. Its also quite likely he didn’t even bother to celebrate the day, or even know it was his 50th birthday. I also suspect that he doesn’t consider this to be the midpoint of his life, nor does he miss hanging out with buddies and eating deliciously grilled beef. But I also can’t help but wonder whether despite the glaring differences in our lives, the hardships he has chosen to live under and the distorted reality under which his brain functions, he was just as happy in his little cave-world as were my friends and I in ours.