Blasting you back to the middle ages

Yesterday, I was referred to on Twitter as “middle-aged”. A “middle-aged woman”. It threw me. I don’t think of myself as middle-aged although I have no problem with telling people my age, which is 48. Funnily enough, my Twitter profile pic is a photo of a plate of hash-browns with the number 47 overlaid them in crispy bacon, a la Walter White. When I turned 48 last December, I crudely edited it with a purposefully messy “8”. So it’s out there. I don’t lie about my age.

So what’s the problem with being referred to as “middle-aged”? I am actually beyond middle-age, as with my genetics, a DNA cocktail of cancer, Alzheimers, heart disease with another smattering of cancer thrown in just to be sure, it’s incredibly unlikely I’ll live to be 96, or even 86. If I lived to 76, I would have outlived the age of my longest-living parent, who died at 74. Cancer. Of course.

There were a few forces in play regarding me even being made aware of this tweet. I wouldn’t have seen it had I not been sitting next to someone who happened to be checking his Twitter feed instead of paying attention to what was happening at the table (how middle-aged does that sound?). I had just been telling the group how much I had enjoyed a comedy gig at The Imperial – a young comedian who was delightfully confident in being kind, sweet and open about the heartbreak and betrayal he had already experienced as a 22 year old. I’d almost cried at his lack of guile.

After the build-up, his emotional punchline was more like a punch to the guts. I could almost see it coming but did not want to be taken down that road and hoped he’d veer into a different direction – that there would be a big reveal, a ‘gotcha’ that wasn’t so fucking poignant. But there wasn’t. It was intimate and awful. And wonderful. He impressed me. I hope he gets big and remains as beautifully philosophical about his lot. Be like water.

Before his gig, he was onstage and chatting with the audience as we sauntered in. He made small talk – the usual “where are you from” stuff along with the “thanks for coming” bits. He asked us about comedy festival highlights – and that’s when I mentioned a gig I’d been to the night before and how much I’d enjoyed it – an hilarious sketch comedy troupe with four gorgeously kooky players. The woman across the aisle agreed enthusiastically. She had seen the gig and loved it too. Take note - she was the labeller. She was the one who would later tweet about this exchange and call me “middle-aged”. "A middle-aged woman at blah blah's gig said blah blah was a highlight of the comedy festival blah..." Something like that. She was young. She was younger.

The group I was dining with knew the performers I’d raved about and the young comedian I’d just seen. To complete the triangle, the comedian was dating one of the comedy troupe. Melbourne comedy - cue the duelling banjos. Everyone knows everybody. So when my Twitter-checking friend saw this tweet, he knew it was about me. Because he knew I was just there, had seen the other act the night before and also knows I’d be big-mouthed enough to give my opinion. My middle-aged opinion.

He thought it was hilarious. I don’t know why I got so shirty. What if she’d just called me ‘an older woman’? Would that have been better? Given that it was Twitter, I was partly impressed with her decision to use so many characters as a descriptor. M I D D L E A G E D (she might have used a hyphen, maybe not) – ten characters. She could have used "older" but she could have just said "someone". It surprises me that she felt the need to describe anyone in that way. Was she trying to make the point that EVEN a middle aged woman found the show funny? Do we somehow lose our ability to laugh at things? 

Well, obviously. Because I didn't find this funny at all. LOL.

He was trying to reassure me by getting in my face about the fact that I was, in fact, middle aged. That didn’t help. To be honest, I could not believe it. I just wouldn’t think that I would ever be described that way. Fuck, I’m vain. I was probably still on a high from having a woman stagger up to me at a nightclub three nights earlier proclaiming “I wanna be like you in, like…. TEN YEARS!” I think in that slight hesitation, even in her inebriated state, she was aware she was being ridiculous in that estimate of my age. She was twenty. The lighting was not that low, the alcohol in her bloodstream not that plentiful that I could have passed for thirty. But I was touched. And told EVERYONE what had happened. It was more that she saw me as a possible role model for ageing that flattered me. She didn’t call me middle-aged.

I just don’t think younger people know how old older people are. I remember finding out my Mum was one of the older mums in my friend group. Most of them were first-borns. I was a second child with a brother over five years older than me. She was an horrifically old THIRTY SEVEN to their early 30s mums. I felt a little ashamed. I still remember.  My second child wasn’t even born until I was almost 37 – I must seem prehistoric to their friends. I was born in the last century – WAY back.

Time is weird. The past is weirder. I still think the 80s was about 15 years ago and am gobsmacked when I encounter fully functioning members of society who were born in 1986 and aren’t still in nappies. Even kids born in 1995 are uni students or have been able to vote for a while.

Ack.

So, what’s the problem? I embraced my forties. I have friends in their sixties and their twenties. Funnily enough I don’t know many people in their mid-thirties for some reason. Probably because they'd describe me as middle-aged, the fuckers. I even celebrated a fake 50^th birthday; my two close friends had each turned 50 a couple of years ago and I thought – fuck it – I may as well pretend I’m 50 as well. Everyone would think I was anyway as I was hanging out with them; like we somehow still keep the rules of high school and are only friends with people our exact age. [The other potential benefit of the ‘fake 50^th’ was that I was counting on people saying to me, “But you look wonderful for FIFTY!” See? You can make this age thing work for you.] 

But apparently I DO look 50 – or at least middle aged.

Whatever that means.