ONE OF THE MORE traumatic aspects of reaching age 40 is the realization that you no longer have the same body you had when you were 21. I know I don't. Sometimes when I take a shower I look down at my body and I want to scream: "Hey, THIS isn't my body! THIS body belongs to Willard Scott!"
But this is perfectly natural. Screaming in the shower, I mean. Reaching age 40, however, is NOT natural. I base this statement on extensive scientific documentation in the form of a newspaper article I vaguely remember reading once, which stated that the life expectancy for human beings in the wild is about 35 years. Think about what that means. It means that if you were in the wild, even in the non-smoking section, by now you'd be Worm Chow. So we can clearly see that going past age 40 is basically an affront to Nature, with Exhibit A being the Gabor sisters.Nevertheless, we are living longer. Thanks to modern medical advances such as antibiotics, nasal spray and Diet Coke, it has become quite routine for people in the civilized world to pass the age of 40, sometimes more than once. As a person reaching this milestone, you need to take the time to learn about the biological changes that are taking place within your body, so that you will be better able to understand and cope with the inevitable and completely natural elements of the aging process - the minor aches, pains, dental problems, intestinal malfunctions, muscle deterioration, emotional instability, memory lapses, hearing and vision loss, impotence, seizures, growths, prostate problems, greatly reduced limb function, massive coronary failure, death and of course painful hemorrhoidal swelling - that make up this exciting adventure we call "middle age."
THE AGING PROCESS
Why do we get older? Why do our bodies wear out? Why can't we just go on and on and on, accumulating a potentially infinite number of Frequent Flier mileage points? These are the kinds of questions that philosophers have been asking ever since they realized that being a philosopher did not involve any heavy lifting.
And yet the answer is really very simple: Our bodies are mechanical devices, and like all mechanical devices, they break down. Some devices, such as battery-operated toys costing $39.95, break down almost instantly upon exposure to the Earth's atmosphere. Other devices, such as stereo systems owned by your next-door neighbors' 13-year-old son who likes to listen to bands with names like "Nerve Damage" at a volume capable of distintegrating limestone, will continue to function perfectly for many years, even if you hit them with an ax. But the fundamental law of physics is that sooner or later every mechanism ceases to function for one reason or another, and it is never covered under the warranty.
Is there something you can do about aging? You're darned right there is! You can fight back. Mister Old Age is not going to get you, by golly! All you need is a little determination - a willingness to get out of that reclining lounge chair, climb into that sweatsuit, lace on those running shoes, stride out that front door and hurl yourself in front of that municipal bus.
No, wait. Sorry. For a moment there I got carried away by the bleakness of it all. Forget what I said. Really. There is absolutely no need to become suicidally depressed about the fact that every organ in your body is headed straight down the biological toilet. There really are things that you can do to keep your body looking healthy and youthful for years to come. But first, I want you to honestly answer the following questions: Are you willing to commit yourself totally to a program of regular exercise, close medical supervision, and the elimination of all caffeine, alcohol and rich foods, to be replaced by a strict diet of nutrition-rich kelp-like plant growths so unappetizing that they will make you actually lust for tofu? Or are you the kind of shallow, irresponsible person who wants a purely cosmetic change, a "quick and dirty" surface gloss that may make you look young and healthy, but actually has no long-term value? Me too.
TIPS FOR THE MORE MATURE GAL
Or: Don't Discard Those Grocery Bags!
Women, let's be realistic: You still want to look good. This is not to say that you assign the same priority to mere physical appearance as to being an independent, fulfilled person. No, you assign a much higher priority to mere physical appearance on some occasions, such as when you're at the beach, idly pummeling your cellulite and wondering whether your varicose veins, if stretched end-to-end, would reach Japan, and suddenly you notice that your husband, who has been pretending to read page 13,462 of James Michener's recent blockbuster epic novel "Cleveland," is in fact ogling a 19-year-old Barbie-shaped woman wearing a bathing suit the size of a hospital identification bracelet.
In situations like this it's quite natural for you to feel insecure, to wonder if your husband secretly wishes that you had the body of a 19-year-old. Trust me, this is not the case: He secretly wishes you had the body of a 16-year-old. The slimeball. I mean, exactly how does he think you got your current set of hips? You got them bearing his children, that's how.
And, OK, even since the birth of your children, you have, on occasion, been guilty of snacking. Why? Because you were stuck in the kitchen, that's why. Because all of the grand claims your husband made, back when you were dating, about how you two were going to be Equal Housework Partners, turned out to mean in actual practice that he occasionally, with great fanfare, refills the ice-cube tray.
Anyway, here you are, at the beach, stuck in a body that looks somewhat alien to you, and this is at least partly the fault of your husband, who promised to stick by you in thickness as well as health and who has not maintained his own body in exactly Olympic diver condition, and the jerk has the nerve to sit right next to you and stare at this bimbo so hard that his eyeballs have actually left their sockets and are crawling, crablike, across the sand.
Not that you are bitter.
Oh, sure, the women's magazines keep saying that it's no longer important to look young, that maturity is "in." But they never use normal mature women to illustrate this point. They use women such as Sophia Loren, an obvious genetic mutation who will continue to have the skin of a child long after the Earth has crashed into the sun. Or they use Jane Fonda, who is so obsessed with remaining inhumanly taut by working out 92 hours a day that it took her more than a decade to notice that she was married to a dweeb. Or they use Cher, for heaven's sake, a woman who has had so much cosmetic surgery that, for ease of maintenance, many of her body parts are attached with Velcro.
So we have to face up to the fact that there is still a flagrant double standard, wherein porky gray men like Raymond Burr are considered physically attractive, whereas women are considered over the hill moments after they reach puberty. Of course you already know this, which is why, like most middle-aged women, you're probably determined to battle the aging process unto death and beyond if necessary. Fortunately, thanks to the selfless, caring people who make up the cosmetics industry, it is now possible for you to remain surprisingly youthful-looking for at least a little longer, with no more of a daily investment in time and money than would be required to build a working steam locomotive by hand.
AGING GRACELESSLY
The central point is that - follow my logic carefully here - unless you die, you will continue to get older. (It's insights like this that separate the professional author from the person with a real job.)
Of course we can't say exactly how old you're going to get without knowing certain scientific facts about you, such as your genetic makeup, your medical history and your tendency to wager large sums of money with men named "Snake." But if you pick up any current actuarial table and look up the average life span for a person of your particular age, sex and weight, you'll realize that, statistically, you have to squint like heck to read the numbers. This proves that you're already older than you think. And it's just going to get worse, because of a law of physics discovered by Albert Einstein, the brilliant physicist who not only invented the White Guy Afro haircut, but also discovered the Theory of Decade Relativity, which states: "Each decade goes exactly twice as fast as the decade before." This is why so much more seemed to happen in the '60s than in the '70s, and why your only truly enduring memory of the '80s, when all is said and done, will be Tammy Faye Bakker.
So now here we are in the '90s, which means that regardless of how many gallons of Oil of Olay you smear on yourself, you're going to start aging faster than a day-old bagel in a hot dumpster. You need to think about this. You need to decide how you're going to deal with the fact that you're becoming an Older Person.
NEXT WEEK: Sports for the Over-40 Person
From: "Dave Barry Turns 40," by Dave Barry. Published by Crown Publishers Inc. (C) 1990 by Dave Barry. All Rights Reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services.