"Well, let's take stock of your life. You're turning forty tomorrow, and you haven't acquired a single thing of real value in your life, and no, money doesn't count."
- Deirdre Lefever from Disney's "The Kid"

“Forty has long been considered a special milestone in life. In ancient China, at the time of Confucius, positions of political power were reserved for men who were 40 or older, on the assumption that maturity and judgement arrived on that age. ”
- from Turning 40 : Wit, Wisdom, and Whining by William K. Klingaman

"Life begins at 40."
- written by some anonymous forty year old seeking psychiatric help

February 5th, 2006

I'm going to be forty on Wednesday.

I have 3 days left of my thirties and Mother Nature is getting her last licks in. As if turning forty weren't bad enough, a week ago I got, for the first time in two years, a very painful blind zit RIGHT ON THE TIP OF MY NOSE. Normally, when I got a zit, it would come at a place somewhat unobtrusive like under my goatee or on my jawline. No, not this time, right at the end of my nose. And it was there proudly saying, "Hi! Can you see me? I'm here and I'm bloated and red! Before the end of the week, I'll be bigger and uglier and maybe I'll explode on an innocent pedestrian... if I'm lucky."

In addition to my nose zit, I got a large fever blister on the top of my lip which would, of course, BLEED EVERY TIME I OPENED MY MOUTH. The fever blister on my lip probably would not have been so bad ordinarily, but my wife playfully thought taking my own fist and having me hit my own mouth with while she said, "Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" was a fun idea. The next day it turned color and began to grow. After that, it exploded.

Thank God for Neosporin with anestetic. I started putting the ointment on both my lip and the end of my nose. Neosporin is supposed to help heal wounds and I thought that it would work on both of these problems. It only succeeded in making my nose shinier and greasier.

Please no Rudolph jokes.

In addition to this, I've decided, yet again, to give up smoking. Well, not 'decided' entirely. For some unknown reason, I lost the desire for smoking right around New Years Eve and without making a real resolution to give up cigarettes, I decided to see how long I could ride this out. It's been a month and there have been no casualties. I keep the unfinished cigarette pack right on my night stand for just such an emergency.

There have been close calls, however. My wife and I went to the local Mexican Restaurant, Escondidos, (Right next to Moores Tavern for those of you familiar with central Jersey) and sat in the bar area to have some dinner. Now, there's a reason we decide to sit in the bar area. It's to have a peaceful meal and it's also to have a smoke if I want one. Well, I didn't want one, but a family of idiots decided to take their three SCREAMING KIDS into the bar area (I preface this with the fact that the rest of the family area of the restaurant was quite vacant). In these cases, I have a natural defense antagonist mechanism that will either pull out my cigarettes, or becoming vulgar. As all my cigarettes were at home, it was going to be a vulgar dinner. I loudly mentioned to my wife a story involving someone's "John Thomas", a hydrolics system, and a violent leak of biological reproduction fluid.

No luck, they would not leave. Some people just don't know how to raise their kids. Oh well. If I'm going to look like an ogre, I may as well act the part, right? Plus, I'm discovering that patience and tolerance are a valuable and scarce commodity in the 39+ age department and I am running real low on those.

Anyway, just as my lip started to heal and my nose was starting to fade (it did eventually explode), I woke up this morning with the largest white head in its place. Now call me crazy but isn't this something that teenagers are supposed to go through and then it ends, right? No, no, I got a revisiting of my teenage acne days before my fortieth birthday. And this just can not be. I just got my hair cut on Thursday of last week which underlined, yet again, that I'm not a teenager as more salt and less pepper fell on the black hairstylist's drop cloth than ever before. Not many teenagers are as white as I'm going and if they are, they should seriously consult a physican or a psychiatrist.

This is also the week that my unemployment officially ends and it is also the week I officially end my e-commerce classes and I officially start full time work with ComputerSims. Officially. This is an interesting start to my fourth decade of life. It also brings into sharp focus the old saying, "Life begins at 40."

What these granola eating twits DON'T say is forty is the beginning of a lifelong relationship with aches, pains, sleep apnea, much needed therapy, insomnia, GERD's, and dietary discipline. F&*kin A! So, in yet another attempt to bring a sound mind and a sound body together (or the best I can therein), I'm going to start my workout regimine yet again. This time I'm going to be armed with my MP3 player on the stairmaster and I'm going to seriously regulate my "eating habits". I figure that now that smoking isn't going to get in my way, I'll be able to do stuff with a bit more endurance. After that I'm going to head up to Staten Island to get some web site work done then I'm going to start giving the house a thorough purging of stuff I have no more use for (like my VHS collection of the Star Trek original series, I have the whole thing on DVD now) and get that into storage.

And as much as this sucks there is a small portion of my mind that remains steadfastly optimistic about my future. The wisdom that comes with four decades of life DOES come. I have experienced this. The skepticism that comes with age is the same bit that recognizes televangelist hatemongers like Rod Parsley for what they are. Oh and just to break off from the topic slightly, he will be in my worst of the worst section of televangelists rants. Because what I saw him say and preach last night was nothing less than a creative concept in destructive idiocy.

I have to tell you this one because it was too stupid to not go uncommented. Parsley typically preaches in Ohio to a large congregation. A large congregation - so large that from the back row of the mega church he preaches at, he looks like a speck. He's aided, of course, by the standard "rock concert" size telescreens for people not fortunate enough to get into his sweating kill zone. Well, a member of his flock who will be going to Bible college (That's gotta be a great place to go - where the tuition is moderate but you save an incredible amount of money from the lack of books you need to buy.) confessed to not only being an ex-lesbian (apparently) but proclaimed that God cured her of her lesbianism. Pastor Parsley even went so far as to suggest that homosexuality was DEMONIC POSSESSION.

I want you to think about that one for a minute. Somewhere in this vast cosmos there is a homosexuality demon and the woman who professed to be a former lesbian essentially said she was demonically possessed. So, less the split pea soup vomit, the neck spins, and the extreme profanity, God, Himself, purged this demon from this woman. Hey! What if an exorcist had done the deed? And through some extrordinary means he was able to actually see what the demon looks like. Now, seeing what a lesbian demon would look like would be quite an event. Picture, if you will, a female demoness with dock martin boots, a crew cut, unshaved legs, no make up, and pitt hair. I picture the male homosexual demon with a pink form fitting suit but somehow looks FAAABUUUULOUS!!!!

I'm sure the exorcist's biggest concern will be the unleashed demon redecorating the room in a practical tasteful manner (which would eventually be photographed for Better Homes and Gardens) and placing the ottoman in exactly the right place.

In any event, I really think that the woman coming forward was the saddest thing I've ever seen. Either, A) she wasn't really a lesbian and just decided she wanted to be with guys or B) IS a lesbian and has succumbed to the hatemongering peer pressure that the Christians have put her through and has decided to live a lie FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE.

This is what the televangelists have brought to us. But, as I've said, I digress.

This is the wisdom of being forty: to recognise the bull shit for what it is when it come flying at you and to be able to actually deal with it in a creative healthy way. Wisdom, as opposed to prejudice, is the ability to reach back into your own experience or from books you've read, think on it, judge whether it was right or wrong and apply it to your own life as a situation calls for it in such a way that it brings harmony to not only your own life but to the lives of others.

Neat, huh? That's a nice birthday present if you accept it.

Unfortunately, something that comes with widsom is the realization of our own mortality. It's kind of depressing when you think of the end of everything you know and everyone you know will be gone one way or another. Because you know that even if you live forever, you will see everyone you ever loved die ahead of you. That includes your dogs, cats, pets, parents, and children.

Religion teaches us that there's an afterlife where you'll see your friends, family, and loved ones. It brings some sanity and solice to our lives. It helps us accept the finality of physical death among our loved ones. It also allows us eventually to get some sleep. And that's really how we evolved a religion and the concept of a God. We do this because there's some innate piece of psychology that asks for accountability so we made a God who not only is a harsh ruler but a compassionate one who expects sacrifice and unnecessary pain. And that pain is released after death.

Of course, knowing you're forty you are that much closer to that nice dirt nap. I will have some amount of acceptance of the world as it is. I know enough to question things that don't seem right and to talk about it or at least make others aware of what I think of the situation. But that's me.

I whine about turning forty as I whine about the concept of inevitability. There really is no way that I won't be forty. There are things that I will never be able to do again. There will be a time where I'll be doing less than what I do now. And with, hopefully, some more wisdom I'll be able to accept new limitations with some amount of detachment.

But for right now, I'm going to work on what I have and enjoy a nice piece of cake that I can blow forty candles off of.