It creeps up on you imperceptibly — the tiny shock when you’re filling out a form and you have to compute the answer to “age,” the lone white hair sticking out on top of your head, running into classmates at the mall and being introduced to their tall, articulate children (They can speak now?!).
You shrug it off and console yourself with the observation that all the guys who were considered cute in school are now paunchy and losing their hair. Meanwhile you have to ask your stylist to layer your hair to make it less big or it will fill up the room. It was an excellent decision not to marry and have kids — not that you’d ever intended to get shackled for the purpose of expanding the gene pool. Your forehead is not ridged and creased like those of your contemporaries, and you can still move your eyebrows and face. Plus you’ll never feel the compulsion to read the text messages on your spouse’s phone or pay unannounced visits to the people in his directory.
But it continues creeping up on you and getting more and more conspicuous. Now you have to pretend not to notice that you just spent 10 minutes plucking out white hairs from the back of your head using two mirrors and a spotlight. Now the vet says there’s really no need to have your cat spayed since she’s nine years old, which among felines is old. You raised her from kittenhood; what does that make you?
Your birthday rolls around and no one suggests putting the exact number of candles on the cake because you’d have to notify the fire department. You hear some “new” hit song by a top-selling artist you can’t distinguish from the other top-selling artists because they’re all the same, bland and manufactured, and you realize that one, the allegedly new song is a remake of a song you owned on cassette and listened to on your Walkman, and two, you’re the only person in the place who knows it’s a remake.
More and more you have to restrain yourself from lecturing 20-year-old “cinephiles” who think 500 Days of Summer is like, you know, like, a Woody Allen movie. Children, let me show you Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors. Let me tell you about the late, unobtrusive genius Eric Rohmer. But the annoyance gives way to pity when you remember that their first experience of Star Wars was the execrable Attack of the Clones.
Then The Killers announce a concert in Manila and the ignore-able becomes unavoidable. “Are we watching The Killers?” Juan asks.
“Of course,” you say.
“But there are no seats,” he points out, and he doesn’t mean they’re sold out, he means there are no seats, period. Everyone stands around a stage in a parking lot, regardless of how much they paid for a ticket. It was fun back in the grunge era—moshpit below the stage, plaid shirts and Doc Martens, sweat and tinnitus. But that was 15 years ago, and in those 15 years we have worked hard so that we DON’T have to cram ourselves into a tiny space, inhale funky smells, or get splattered by other people’s sweat. By the way I still have my bright red Doc Martens but I don’t wear them. . .because they’re heavy! One appreciates comfort with the years.
“Maybe we could bring those metal canes that fold out into stools?” I suggested. That is assuming I can bring myself to take such an object to a rock concert. Why don’t I just pay someone to announce, “The old persons are here!”
My sister reminded me that the last time we went to a concert in an open field, umbrellas and belts with buckles were not allowed, lest they be used as weapons. I see myself telling the security guard, “Hijo, hindi ko yan ipang-pupukpok, uupuan ko yan.” (Young man, I have no intention of whacking people with that, I intend to sit on it.)
“We’re going to be the oldest people in the audience,” Juan predicted.
“Naah, that can’t be.” We are accustomed to being the youngest people in the room, we’re nerds. Could it be that not only are we the ex-youngest, we are now. . .Surely not.
I texted two guys who were likely to watch the show. One is an architect and the other an investment banker, but they play in bands and more importantly, they’re older than I am. If they’re going to the concert, I will not be the geriatric section. “Are you watching The Killers?” I asked.
“Not me,” said investment banker slash guitarist, “But I think my kids are.”
A chill went through my blood, reminding me that my older friends are now taking Lipitor and baby aspirin. Bad enough that we would be surrounded by kids, but they would be kids of people we know.
It occurred to me that if in 1997 Goran Ivanisevic (Croatian tennis great, look him up, kids) had hurled his racquet into the air in a fury and it had landed on his head, and the concussion caused him to marry me, our spawn would now be 13 and the holder of a ticket to The Killers.
Aaaargh!
I take comfort in the thought that while physical aging is an inescapable fact of life, psychological aging can be warded off indefinitely. I am grateful to friends who share my refusal to act my age. Just the other day I overheard Noel’s phone conversation with one of his oldest friends.
“How could I have been a bully in grade school?” he said. “You’re the one who kept trying to throw me telekinetically.”
Old age is inevitable, but immaturity is forever. There’s an anti-oxidant.