yes please(21)

Hopefully I have another forty to fifty years of living ahead of me before I pass from this earth either in my sleep or during a daring rescue caught on tape. Ideally my penultimate day would be spent attending a giant beach party thrown in my honor. Everyone would gather around me at sunset, and the golden light would make my skin and hair beautiful as I told hilarious stories and gave away my extensive collection of moon art to my ex-lovers. I and all of my still-alive friends (which, let’s face it, will mostly be women) would sing and dance late into the night. My sons would be grown and happy. I would be frail but adorable. I would still have my own teeth, and I would be tended to by handsome and kind gay men who pruned me like a bonsai tree. Once the party ended, everyone would fall asleep except for me. I would spend the rest of the night watching the stars under a nice blanket my granddaughter made with her Knit-Bot 5000. As the sun began to rise, an unexpected guest would wake and put the coffee on. My last words would be something banal and beautiful. “Are you warm enough?” my guest would ask. “Just right,” I would answer. My funeral would be huge but incredibly intimate. I would instruct people to throw firecrackers on my funeral pyre and play Purple Rain on a loop.

It wasn’t until I turned thirty that I started to feel like my adult life was beginning. I had just been hired on Saturday Night Live and was about to attend my own surprise dance party; then September 11 came and the whole world went bananas. I had met Will and I knew I wanted to marry him and try to have children someday. I had paid off my student loans and I knew how to jump-start my own car battery. I had spent so much of my twenties in a state of delayed adolescence and so much of my teenage years wishing and praying that time would move faster. I remembered being five years old when my mother turned thirty. My dad threw a big party for her and the adults got drunk in the basement. I sat on the stairs in Holly Hobbie pajamas and listened to the clinking sound of ice in glasses. They all brought dirty presents from Spencer Gifts, a joke shop in our local mall that had boob mugs and fart machines and penis pasta. We would go in there as kids and sneak peeks at the dirty stuff, pretending to understand the bad sex jokes. Ten years later, for my mom’s fortieth, my dad made a homemade “Buns” calendar that included relatives and friends. They all posed in various funny underwear. Some were in Speedos playing the piano and others were in saggy pants showing their butt crack while fixing the kitchen sink. All this was the kind of groovy, semi-lewd suburban stuff that in some instances led to “key parties.” Thankfully, at least to my knowledge, there was no wife swapping in my childhood home. If there was, I don’t want to know about it. Family, please remember this when you all write your inevitable and scathing memoirs.

At thirty I felt like I had about six or seven years of feeling like a real adult before my brain and society started to make me worry about being old. There is the built-in baby stuff, plus the added fascination with the new. But here’s the thing. Getting older is awesome, and not because you don’t care as much about what people think. It’s awesome because you develop secret superpowers. Behold:

Getting older makes you somewhat invisible. This can be exciting. Now that you are better at observing a situation, you can use your sharpened skills to scan a room and navigate it before anyone even notices you are there. This can lead to your finding a comfortable couch at a party, or to the realization that you are at a terrible party and need to leave immediately. Knowing when to edit is a great aspect of being older, and since you are invisible, no one will even notice you are gone. Not getting immediate attention can mean you decide how and when you want people to look at you. Remember all those goofy comedies in the eighties where men became invisible and hung out in women’s locker rooms? Remember how the men got to watch pretty girls take showers and snap each other with towels? You can do this, but in a different way. You can witness young people embarrassing themselves and get a thrill that it’s not you. You can watch them throw around their “alwayses” and “nevers” and “I’m the kind of person who’s” and delight in the fact that you are past that point in your life. Feeling invisible means you can float. You can decide to travel without permission. You know secrets and hear opinions that weren’t meant for you to hear. Plus, it’s easier to steal things.

Getting older also helps you develop X-ray vision. The strange thing is that the moment people start looking at you less is when you start being able to see through people more. You get better at understanding what people mean and how it can be different from what they say. Finally the phrase “actions speak louder than words” starts to make sense. You can read people’s energies better, and this hopefully means you get stuck talking to less duds. You also may start to seek out duds, as some kind of weird emotional exercise to test your boundaries. You use the word “boundaries.” You can witness bad behavior and watch it like you would watch someone else’s child having a tantrum. Gone are the days (hopefully) when you take everything personally and internalize everyone’s behavior. You get better at knowing what you want and need. You can tell what kind of underwear people are wearing.

Lastly, because you are a superhero, you are really good at putting together a good team. You can look around the room and notice the other superheroes because they are the ones noticing you. The friends you meet over forty are really juicy. They are highly emulsified and full of flavor. Now that you’re starting to have a sense of who you are, you know better what kind of friend you want and need. My peers are crushing it right now and it’s totally amazing and energizing to watch. I have made friends with older women whom I have admired for years who let me learn from their experience. I drink from their life well. They tell me about hormones and vacation spots and neck cream. I am interested in people who swim in the deep end. I want to have conversations about real things with people who have experienced real things. I’m tired of talking about movies and gossiping about friends. Life is crunchy and complicated and all the more delicious.