Observation # 4 - Mid Life Crisis

Middle aged men will almost all go through a mid life crisis at some point, depending on when they feel they've hit mid life I suppose. I've seen the extremes, from one guy spending thousands on his golf game for equipment and lessons to the loner that sells everything he owns and becomes a sheep Herder in Montana. We all justify it the same way, we earned it........ nice try but not true. We do it in order to hang onto that last shred of our youth. We need to feel we can still compete with our younger brethren on some level. The golfer wants to be able to say he beat a younger man on the golf course before he spends the rest of the day recovering from the workout of being his own caddy, after all it's says more about the man that can carry his own clubs over an 18 hole course at the expense of every joint in his body. The sheep herder want s to prove............... OK, I can't explain the sheep herder, that's just weird, but you get the point.

For me, my mid life crisis manifested itself in the more common way, owning the car you lusted over as a youth. I bought my dream car, a red classic Corvette, the car that made me weak in the knees as a young man just getting his start in the real world. Good enough, not hardly. I then had to buy a second newer model in black because I was afraid to drive the red one, I know it makes no sense but it works for me. Have you ever looked around while driving, you will almost never see a woman or a young man in a Corvette because these cars are small, noisy, hot, uncomfortable, have no payload capacity and can't be driven in bad weather at the real risk of death. Women and young men don't want these things, they are too practical for Corvettes. These vehicles are primarily driven by middle aged men living vicariously through their cars. There's just something about taking the top off and letting the wind blow through your hair, if you still have any. If it gets too windy some of us will put our hair in the passenger seat to keep it safe. It works for a while, but at some point you just become a very old man in a very nice car, not really fooling anyone at that point.

For me it's about small victories. When I'm in that black Corvette and have my right foot on the accelerator, I know that in a competition with any 3o year old man in his Honda, I can get to Wal-Mart first. Of course I won't be able to buy anything bigger than a pair of shoes when I get there as anything larger won't fit inside. I guess it's kind of a shallow victory, but at least I can show up for my prostate exam in a Vette.