- The Age We
Live In
- by William Elliott Hazelgrove
I saw
them. It was the end of the night and I was driving out
of Chicago. I had been out with an old friend to our old haunts
and the night had ended in a restaurant. I was driving thorugh
an old neighbordhood where I used to have an apartment. In Chicago
Lincoln park is akin to a college town and this is where I spent
my twenties and part of my thirties reliving college and putting
off the inevitable. I was
driving past my old street then at about two AM and I saw the
couple staggering down a snowy street. He had on a long dark
coat much like the one I used to wear with the collar turned
up. Maybe tennis shoes. She was slightly behind him throwing
snow in a ski jacket. I hit the brakes and couldn't stop watching
them go down my old street and knew then, what I had avoided
all night.
"I don't see anyone our age here."
That was how it started. My friend had made this obersvation
in the bar.
"I've never heard you say that before."
"Things have changed," he said shrugging. "I
feel old here."
Now...there are lots of ways to come down on this issue. You're
as young as you feel. Hope I die before I get old. Don't trust
anyone over thirty. The Stone should hang it up, who wants to
see a bunch of old men acting like their twenty. Myself, I'm
a writer. Ageless. Creative. Peter Pan. All ID. Age. Who cares.
You're as old as you feel and for my entire life this has been
my mantra. And this is how it should be. But we live in a youth
culture. The ride is short before one is considered old. How
short...well, lets just take prime time television as a guide....twenties.
Yep, twenties and maybe early thirties. There was a show called
Thirty Something but that was about people who spent most
of their time fantasizing about being twenty something or younger.
So really, twenty something.. Which leaves us now with current
mortality tables being what they are..about fiftty to sixty years
of feeling...well...old!
So there we are in the bar of our choice. With a couple of
martinis. Two men who look young but are now just touching forty.
My God! Say it aint' so Joe. But I never give it a thought. I
always looked six years younger than I am. That's what not working
for a livng will do for you but my friend....my compatriot of
many years just threw us out of the bar and into the street.
Sorry, boys, you're too old now! You've had your time now
move on to another place, suburb, lounge, health club...but this
establishment is for twenty something people and all their friends.
Did you ever notice the difference between someone in their twenties
and someone in their late thirties or forties...it's friends.
Where the hell do they get all those people? But of course we
had the same gang and the gang rules the bar. The few forty something
or older thirty somethings or fifty something slink in the corners
and have their drinks and leave.
But this is not what
I think. This is not how it's been. I never gave age a thought.
Yes there were younger people but who cared? I was having a good
time. But my friend and I wern't. Something had changed. Now,
one big thing was my friend was finally getting married. Big
deal. I have wife and child. Never stopped me. But this was new
for him. Something had shifted and he had already left what was
before a recreation. He had recently come into a lot of money
in the stock market. Before he was a struggling film maker. But
now he was suddenly established. Does success make one feel old?
Does money? I saw these as reasons and brought him up sharply
for stating the
obvious.
"I just don't enjoy it anymore...we're the only ones
in our forties in the bar."
I point out several other people who are in their forties...maybe
older! But it doesn't help. He has that look. The glancing around.
Uncertainty. Outside of his milyer...experience realm.
"No...I just feel old here," he said and we left.
Off
to a restaurant at eleven thirty. Hardly a night out.
Not like our many pool playing hard drinking nights. But we had
changed. He had changed. I saw it as simply he had lost the ability
to lose himself in the wild tide of night that is what one tries
to do in a big city. No. It was simply over for him. And that
was depressing. Beyond the age thing I saw that he and I were
now different. I didn't believe I was old. I didn't believe you
couldn't break boundries and enjoy the magic over and over. And
so we parted that night agreeing to disagree. I dropped him off
and headed home.
Cutting through my old neighborhood I glance down my street
and there is that couple. It is now after the bars have closed
and people are making their trek home. But they arent' driving
out to Oak Park like I am. They are going down my old street
to a brownstone apartment. A woody old apartment with a fireplace
where my wife and I would stagger into after an all night Balzian
party and fall comotose into bed. I pulled the car over and sit.
They are staggering down the snowy street and and he
has on my long coat and she is throwing snow at him. They laugh
and stagger and I can see the yellow lights of the apartments
further down. I watch in fascination stone sober and think my
wife and I should rent an apartment for a weekend. It would be
fun to stagger back to an apartment . But then I stop. They are
disappearing into the night now and I know then the immutable
truth that the youth culture never bothered to tell me. You are
as young as you feel. You should never be limited by your age.
But I could no longer stagger down that old snowy street no matter
how much I wanted to. That belonged to them. If a sentimentalist
is someone who hopes that things will last and a romantic is
someone who has the desperate conviction that things won't...then
I was. finally, the romantic, justly served.
