When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine? Birthday greetings? Bottle of wine?
I started wearing suspenders (“braces”, if you’re of the British persuasion.) Is this the final capitulation of the Baby Boomer?
You know the stereotypes: an old man in a rocker on the front porch of a rickety store, smoking, hooking his thumbs in the suspenders on either side and telling boring stories. Or the urban working class guy with the tattered coat and flat cap (I have several of those, too). Or Uncle Joe of suspect sexual predilections. At best, I’m Captain Jack of Torchwood; at worst, friends call me “Snuffy.”
I bought them for costumes. The first set was for a bit part in a staged reading of The Rainmaker; I played Grampa. The second pair was part of an appearance by Ken Burns to promote his Prohibition film; I dressed as a worker in a bootlegging warehouse. All in good fun, and I embraced the stereotypes.
But then I made an uncomfortable discovery: the damn things are comfortable and practical.
I’ve been having this problem. My belly protrudes. It didn’t do this when I was working out every day and riding my bicycle to work. But it does now, swelling like a balloon. And my pants keep falling down. I’ve found that I have two options: 1) cinch a belt as tightly as I can around my hips, in which case my shirts invariably become untucked and I suffer from 19th-Century female “diseases”; or 2) hitch the pants up above the apogee of my stomach bulge, in which case I become one of the Katzenjammer Kids.
The suspenders solve both problems. The pants stay at the proper level, and the shirts stay tucked within them (well, mostly. Buttons still have a tendency to pop apart, though.) So far I’ve been able to hide them under sweaters so my concession to age has gone largely unnoticed, but Spring will someday arrive, and there I’ll be: a certified senior with suspenders and a Hawaiian shirt. Maybe shorts, too—why not embrace the decrepit dorkiness of it all?
Gotta go. The front porch rocker needs me.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?
I am suprised that this is your first blog. My hazy understanding of writers was that they would embrace the format after thir first public paragraph. Congratulations Roger. It looks as if I am your first bloggie, or what ever my joining the blog is called.
ReplyDeleteTo start you blog with a dirge on boomer aging? an insight into you current mood? There is another option to braces, walking, riding your bike again, letting go of the idea that you have to have your 'pint' every day. Speaking of which I talked to Chris Muench the other day. He is the happy brewer of a "London Porter" this winter. He seems to be well and Gala is now a hihg school art teacher who has an affinity for home brew as well.
Roger B
Roger, 64 is a guard in the NFL, or a Corvette Stingray, or the product of 8x8, or a year of the Civil War, or the year of the most important Civil Rights Act. It isn’t the age of a person – not you or me. It can’t be – not yet. But I love the “bracing for it” trope. Congratulations on the long overdue launching of your blog. Brent
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