Turning 50-who me?!

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
Kin Hubbard

To commemorate turning 50 this year, I have scheduled trips with 2 different sets of guy friends, all of whom will be turning 50 years old sometime during 2007. The first trip is with a group of friends and acquaintances from high school (Niles North class of '75.) This tightly knit group, known in our youth as the B-Jocks, accepted me as an honorary member somewhere along the line. We will be going to Las Vegas to do I'm not sure what. Celebrate? Commiserate? Just get away from spouses with a halfway decent excuse that won't be thrown in our faces at the first glimmer of an argument? (For the record, I don't have a spouse, but I do have a wonderful live-in girlfriend, Dyan. Also for the record, I am NOT trying to get away from her. No, really!)

Later this year, I'll be taking another turning-50 guy trip with the Dahlgren group, so named by me after the spiritual center of the gang, Greg. Though Greg and I went to college together for 4 years, and he knew OF me as a result of one of my classic stupid pranks which entailed giving away a car during my dormitory radio shift, Greg and I didn’t actually meet until being thrust together in the same corridor of our law school dormitory. (Greg, by the way, happens to be about the only person I know who remains virtually unchanged physically from when he was 25. This is not necessarily a compliment; he wasn’t in shape then either.) Our destination for this trip has not yet been determined. I do know it will NOT be Vegas since we go there every year; I do know it will be only GUYS.

So why the hub-bub about going away to mark our turning 50? After all, I've been trying to get a lot of these same guys to go away on guy trips for years (I'll leave the defining of a guy trip to another post), but its only happened on a large group participation scale like this once before; when the B-Jocks turned 40. And yes, we went to Vegas then also. I still think the go-away-with-a good-excuse reason holds more water than most will admit. "Honey, the guys and I are taking a trip to celebrate the summer solstice" just doesn't seem to cut it. But I digress (which I will do often in the course of my writing, though I will attempt to refrain from digressing from my digressions.)

We are going away because turning 50 is a big fucking deal, and like it or not, its something to embrace and deal with in whatever way that makes us happy and helps us cope with the inevitable. My guess is that some of us are going on the trip to let loose; others to feel young again; some to get away from their wives; some to screw around and act silly; or a combination of all of these or maybe none at all. The thing is, it doesn't really matter because we all have our reasons and meanings that we attach to the trip and being 50 damn years old.

Don’t get me wrong; I'm not angry about turning 50, though I'm certainly far from happy about it. Its more a case of being surprised, as in "how the hell did this happen so quickly?!" One day I was beginning another career at the ripe age of 30, and the next moment I find myself making plans with my OLD (literally) friends to numb some of the pain of becoming 50.

So what are my reasons? For me there's no great mystery about why I'm going; it’s a chance to get away from Dyan. Ha, kidding. REALLY! I'm going because it’s a rare opportunity to spend time with friends with whom I have both a bond and history with and ordinarily don't get to see very often. People who were important to me and with whom I shared a part of my life with at various times starting as far back as kindergarten; guys whom I got to know when I was 5, 15, 25 and now, happily still, am still getting to know as we approach 50. And for me, it’s a history that cannot be duplicated or replaced by others who have come along and entered my life at later stages. There’s just something about friendships that were created when we were young and stupid that makes them irreplaceable, and for me at least, invaluable

So I guess I can answer my question after all; what's the big deal and why are we going? We're going because having friends, and especially ones that you've grown up with and struggled with and continued to care about is something to celebrate and cherish. So what if we need to use the excuse of turning 50 to get away and spend some time together. We're doing it, and in our own way, I think we're all doing it for the same basic reason.