It is just
past my birthday- happy birthday to me. 36! I am old now. I played basketball
the other day and every injury I ever had came back. My back, my leg, my knee,
my ankle, my thumb, my wrist. It was like I reached my expiration. My toe
started hurting. I didn’t even remember that injury. When I was three years
old, a stubbed my toe on a Tonka Truck.
Now I got
random growths coming out of my body. Young people don’t have that crazy stuff
growing out. Growth spurts are normal when you are a teenager. Now I have to
get doctors to cut off extensions of my body. I had something on my hand and he
burned it off. There were no candles in the cake, but I did celebrate by plucking
out 36 hairs from my nose and ears. Pluck. I shave hairs that are supposed to
stay there. I am talking- plucking. I violently had to remove 36 hairs. At 30,
they stop putting candles in cakes. Now I am stuck pulling out my age in hairs.
I was
looking at pictures. Everybody looks better young. You get old, they use
adjectives to describe the way you look, which have nothing to do with
physique. ‘He is distinguished looking.’ ‘He looks dignified.’ ‘He looks
bitter.’ You get moody and they try to make it sound like something positive.
It is even harder for women. No man wants a dignified looking woman. If they came
dumber looking, that is what most men would like. It all reminds me that I
should have been married already. My 36th birthday brings back all
my failures, and injuries.
Thank Gd for
Facebook. If it wasn’t for Facebook, I would think nobody cared about me. But
people can post on my wall and I feel loved. ‘Happy Birthday’ and that is a
love post. No thought put into it. I do not want the whole world seeing how
badly we messed up last year when the bowels stopped working in the middle of
the promenade; as funny and apropos it is to my turning 36.
36. I am old
now. I really mean it. I know I meant it when I
turned 26, but I mean it now. They won’t even let me talk to young girls
anymore. I go to a party, I am the scary old guy. They make us stand in corners,
so that everybody can look at us and mock us. I am the frightening guy who
causes young women to comment, ‘Those old guys are scary…they are too old…they
shouldn’t have the right to meet people.’ And I understand. When old single
guys…I remember when a man my dads age was hitting on the same woman I was.
There is something to say for separating age groups some times, and he should
not have mentioned how much fun he had, growing up with my dad in the ‘50s. But
I am not an ageist, as the matchmakers are. I do not discriminate against age
and I think it is wrong. One’s hopes should never be destroyed by the fear of
arrest.
I am now in
the next age group and I don’t know what to do. They think I am young in Israel,
as most men in the Middle East go through puberty at pre-school and then stay
in the sun for 40 years. But my birth certificate shows that I have
accomplished very little. Yigal gave me the idea to get a fake ID, to show I am
21. Should I start lying about my age?
I can’t even talk
to women under 32 anymore. They won’t let me. Even if I go to singles events,
they separate us. They promise the women, 27 to 35 year olds. In the ad, ‘Women
till 27 will only talk to men up to 35. Older people will be in a different
area.’ They let the women know, ‘Do not worry, we will keep the old guys away
from you.’ I am now somebody they protect girls from. They quarantine us. No
hope anymore. I now have to go to the Jerusalem singles parties for people
between the ages of 36 and 90.
It is
amazing how I had these same complaints at 26. I love every moment on earth that Gd gives me to complain.
No comments:
Post a Comment