Middle Age Cranky at 100: Fine Whines & Muddled Memories
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About this ebook
Howard Baldwin isn't really a cranky guy; he just plays one in his blog. In this compilation of his first 100 columns, he wends his way with both humor and harrumph through the aggravations of 21st century life, but also touches on nostalgia, accumulated wisdom, and appreciation both for the way things are and the way they used to be.
Howard Baldwin
Howard Baldwin has worked as a writer and editor since 1977. His work has appeared in Stanford, Computerworld, InfoWorld, Macworld, PC World, PC Computing, the Seattle Times, the San Jose Mercury-News, and several inflight magazines and daily newspapers. He lives with his wife, a physician, and their two cats in the Silicon Valley.
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Middle Age Cranky at 100 - Howard Baldwin
Middle Age Cranky at 100:
Fine Whines and Muddled Memories
By Howard Baldwin
Illustrations by Kathryn Rathke
Copyright © 2012 by Howard Baldwin
Published by Howard Baldwin at Smashwords
See the latest Middle Age Cranky at http://middleagecranky.wordpress.com/
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Growing Up and Growing Old
Cycling
Random Thoughts on Turning 55
Why My Undergraduate Self Would Never Recognize Me
Becoming An Adult
Seven Things That Really Frost Me About MiddleAge
Seven More Things That Really Frost Me About Middle Age
Seven Things That I Should Have Expected – But Didn't
Looking For The Change Machine
The Switch Flips at Fifty
The Principle of TiVo Gone Awry
Battle of the Bulge
Funny How Things Turn Out
A Parade of Changing Tastes
A Parade of Changing Tastes, Part II
A Hair-Raising Experience (With Any Luck)
Chapter 2: Careers
When Should Boomers Euthanize Their Dreams?
When The Brass Ring Slips From Your Fingers
When The Girls Outperform The Boys
On The Firing Line
The Road Not Taken
Fantasizing About Retirement
Chapter 3: Pets
To Praise a Thief
Help Save Coco and Cookie From Their Irresponsible Parents
When Foreclosure Comes, Blame The Cats
Lawyers, Used Car Dealers .. and Veterinarians?
Chapter 4: Memories & Nostalgia
Slinking Through Time
Los Angeles, 1962
It’s a Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost World
Lost in the Fog
Driver’s Education and Other Nostalgic Sentiments
Summer, 1972
A Drive Across Time
October Memories
Forgotten But Not Gone
Missing: Impossible?
What Was This Blog Entry Supposed To Be About?
When Memories Collide
Still Confused After All These Years
Stumbling Down Memory Lane
Chapter 5: Pop Culture
Friday Nights at 8:30, 1963
Lullaby and Good Night
Stuck With the Wrong Lyrics
Pleading Guilty to and Taking Pleasure from Project Runway
Showing Our Age
Why I Love Facebook
With A Little Help from Friends
The Rich Are Different Than You And Me — Sometimes They’re Stupider
Wonderful Life, Wonderful Wizard: Accidental Classics
Tribute to an Imprisoned Lawyer
Talkin' About My Generation … Dying
The Unmitigated Arrogance of Some People
Why Don't They Remake These Movies?
Boomer Oscar Quiz
Chapter 6: Aggravations
Addressing An Aggravating Issue
Are Boomers’ Bad Habits Spreading To Their Parents?
Questions I’m Having Trouble Answering
Bully Button Lint
Cambridge Blues
Taking Aim At An Easy Target
Chapter 7: Stuff
Shreds of My Existence
Time For A Younger Model
Death of a Skillet
Sensors Gone Wild
Razed in the U.S.A.
Watch Out!
Chapter 8: Death
Little Boy Lost
Expectations, Interrupted
Regrets Only
A Holiday With A Big Hole in the Middle
When Complacence and Physics Collide
As I Lay Thinking About Death
Chapter 9: Seasons
Time For A Different Kind of Holiday
Frustrated With February
Happy Holidays!
Yes, Virginia, There Is A Downside
Whatever Happened To Halloween?
2010 Gift-Giving Suggestions
Call Me Scrooge
Chapter 10: Politics
Bad Friday
Living With the Gray
Unanswered Political Questions
A Bad Case of Déjà vu
Can’t We All Just Get Along?
The Liberal’s Dilemma
Economies of Scale: Sweet Music or Sour Notes?
A Better Name: The Useless Tax
Caution: Caution Ahead
Chapter 11: Corporate Idiocy
The Fees, the Rule of Three, and Me
I'll Take Stupid Corporate Decisions for $1000, Alex
Doctor’s Disorders
Divorce, (Bank of) America Style
You Never Forget Your First
Chapter 12: Travel
Embracing My Inner Fuddy-Duddy
Suite and Sour
Weekend in New Orleans: A Different Kind of Katrina
On The Outskirts of Unconventional Lives
Chapter 13: The Man Behind the Curtain
Blank Slate
Celebrating A Cranky Anniversary
Chapter 14: Potpourri
Theories of Relativity, or Can I Have Sex With That Girl?
The Proceedings Will Be Conducted In English
Crankcase
Author’s Note
I’m not really a cranky guy; I just play one in my blog. Granted, it’s really easy for a Baby Boomer like me to get aggravated, but I still see a lot of wonderful things in the world. Middle Age Cranky may have begun in aggravation and grumpiness, but it frequently wends its way through nostalgia, accumulated wisdom, and appreciation both for the way things once were and the way they have become.
Middle Age Cranky at 100: Fine Whines and Muddled Memories is a compilation of my first hundred blog posts: the first year’s at http://middleagecranky.blogspot.com/ and the rest at http://middleagecranky.wordpress.com/ (where it’s much easier for readers to leave comments).
A few thanks are in order: to everyone who reads Middle Age Cranky regularly; to my frequent editorial consultant, Tam Harbert; to all those who encouraged me to compile these columns; to my beloved wife, who’s patiently lived through it all; to Sylvia Chevrier, who brought her considerable design expertise to this effort; and to Kathryn Rathke, whose illustrations herein I love.
If you like Middle Age Cranky at 100: Fine Whines and Muddled Memories, stay tuned for Middle Age Cranky at 200: Forgetting What Happened, Remembering What Didn’t.
Chapter 1 – Growing Up & Growing Old
Cycling
(originally published April 19, 2010; #52)
Yesterday I rode my bicycle to the library.
In the abstract, it sounds silly for a man in his 50s to be riding a bicycle. But in the moment, I am astounded by how much I love it.
Part of it is just plain old common sense. It isn't far to the library, but that's a smidgen less gasoline used, and I hadn't done any other exercising over the weekend. But there's something more than that.
Mine is not a fancy bicycle. It's got 15 speeds, five more than the last bicycle I had, but I really only use the middle five. It takes me back. I was very independent for a seven-year-old. My working parents would let me cycle to the swim club, a couple of miles away. (I wonder if parents let their kids ride their bicycle that far anymore.) I used to ride my bicycle to the nearest Baskin-Robbins, when a single scoop cone cost 12 cents. That Baskin-Robbins is still there, but of course, the cones are more expensive now.
I remember my friend Jim Scott and I used to take a circuitous route up into the same hills, just to find ourselves at the top of a long and winding road. Sometimes we'd have to walk our bikes for part of the trip, but oh, that wonderful feeling of navigating those rolling curves on the way down. The downhill made the uphill all worth it.
These days, I sometimes cycle up to a nearby county park to go hiking, and it's a bit of a climb to get there. But oh, baby, that ride back down. The breeze, the ability to stop pedaling and be motionless, almost to be flying through the air, like a dream but wide awake.
There aren’t too many ways to feel like a kid again, but being on a bicycle sure is one of them.
Random Thoughts on Turning 55
(originally published October 18, 2010; #78)
This coming Sunday is my 55th birthday. It is an occasion for some truly random thoughts to tumble through my head.
Given that I came of age during a couple of Arab oil embargos, I always thought of 55 as a speed limit, not an age.
Rod Serling is one of my favorite writers. When he was my age, he had been dead for five years (with a tip of the hat to Tom Lehrer, who first told that joke about Mozart).
What a difference five years make. I spent my 50th birthday swimming in a Tahitian lagoon. Today I’m still swimming in the debts I racked up during the downturn; in fact, I think I’m still paying off the trip to Tahiti.
My paternal grandmother died at 101. That meant that for me, turning 50 really was middle age. Calling myself middle-aged today means I would have to live to 110.
I Googled the term dead at 55.
What an eye-opener. I knew that Robert Urich and Johnny Ramone had died that young, but not David Dukes, Wendy Wasserstein, and Mary Frann.
On the cover story of Life magazine the day I was born was a picture of Cecil B. DeMille directing the exodus scene from The Ten Commandments. Inside was a story about Pan American Airlines giving Boeing a $269-million order for its first jet aircrafts, a group of Boeing 707s. Reading the ads I learned that Campbell’s once made frozen soups, Pillsbury once made pie crust sticks, and there was once an artificial sweetener named Sucaryl. I liked reading about the jets. The ads made my stomach queasy.
When my father was 55, I was in college. I cannot imagine having a college-age child today. Sometimes I dream that I’m still in college.
I wonder if there’s something numerological about turning 55, given that I was born in 1955. I am the same age as Disneyland, McDonald’s, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ditto Kevin Costner, Bruce Willis, and Howie Mandel. I will never have as much money as any of them.
James Dean died three weeks before I was born. I am not his reincarnation.
I don’t feel 55 – most days, anyway. Some days, I feel 85. Some days, I feel 25. I guess I average out.
I am already starting to feel the aches and pains associated with age. Friends who are older assure me it is only going to get worse. I can already see incipient leatheriness in my skin. When I am old, I shall look like I grew up in California.
Why My Undergraduate Self Would Never Recognize Me
(originally published September 13, 2010; #73)
The increasing parade of friends’ children heading off to college has sent me down memory lane to my own undergraduate days. I realized with a jolt that, while college is usually the cauldron where we begin cooking our adult, independent selves, my undergraduate self would never recognize me now. Thanks to many years of therapy, I often think of that earlier time (which extends to my mid-30s, when I got married) as another life. But in addition to my gaining some emotional stability, there are other changes that were highly unexpected. They range from the trivial to the spiritual.
Coffee. I never drank coffee in college. It wasn’t until I had a job that required me to commute to San Francisco via a 5:35 a.m. train that I needed caffeine in order to function. Though the downturn has tempered my visits to Starbucks, the house is never without New Orleans’ French Market coffee.
Movies. The first newspaper article I ever wrote was a review of the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force, in January 1974, for my college newspaper. It was the first of hundreds. Even when studying for finals coincided with new movie releases, you’d be more likely to find me in the screening room than the library. I reviewed movies for one publication or another through 1981, until the movie industry seemingly started targeting its movies primarily to 12-year-old boys. For a long time, I still enjoyed going to the movies, but as home video players took hold, people got used to chattering during movies, whether they were in their living room or a movie theatre. That drove me bonkers.
Today, of course, movies themselves have grown increasingly noisy, so I have grown accustomed to watching them on DVDs with subtitles. I can’t remember the last movie I saw in a theatre.
Drinking. There was a time when a bottle of champagne had no chance of surviving the night in my apartment. Today (with thanks again to the therapy for lessening my need for anesthesia), I’m done at two glasses of wine (and sometimes one).
Money. Let’s face it, what I knew about money management in college was less than I knew about physics, a class I flunked. Imagine my surprise today at having a home with equity and an actual retirement fund. Age — and being married to a practical German — will do that to you.
Religion. I never went to church, except for a year or so when my father took me to a Unitarian-Universalist church when I was about ten. I hated Sunday school, and never had much use for the concept of divinity. But about ten years ago, I started looking for more spirituality and found it in the local Unitarian-Universalist fellowship. We believe in Jesus more as a role model than a divine figure, and cadge elements of other religions at will. Just as Will Rogers once said, I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat,
I’m not a member of any organized religion. I’m a Unitarian-Universalist.
If my 50s self is nothing like my 20s self, I wonder who I’ll be in my 80s.
Becoming An Adult
(originally published September 20, 2010; #74)
I have to admit that when I wrote last week’s blog about how differently I saw myself as an adult than I had as an undergraduate, I didn’t think even more issues would come up, but they did.
I cared not a whit for football — or any sports — when I was young. Marrying a die-hard football fan whose father took her to Oakland Raiders’ games at age 8 changed all that. Now I can even talk about the societal import of the December 28, 1958, game at Yankee Stadium between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants.
I realized that while I was once a devoted fraternity member — both as an undergraduate and as a volunteer alumnus — I have left that phase of my life beyond. Being a member of a western chapter of a southern-focused fraternity is kind of like being a PhD at a blue-collar family reunion. They’ll acknowledge that you’re part of the group, but they won’t ask you to join in too many conversations.
But the change that astonishes me the most relates to work. I never worked hard in school. When I talked about being a movie reviewer last week, I neglected to mention that the big movie-release seasons (summer and Christmas) coincided with finals. Hightailing it up to the screening room in San Francisco always took precedence over studying, and yet I still managed to wrest a degree out of the deal.
When I was in high school, I had an English teacher who labeled me a blithe spirit. She accused me of skating merrily along with nary a worry nor a proclivity toward work. I was smart enough to get by. When I graduated from Stanford, my immediate goal was to write a screenplay. It was only by sheer coincidence that I ended up working at a start-up travel magazine, which sent me on my career path.
Yet today, I am a self-employed writer. Diligent. Dedicated to serving my clients. Fully aware that if I don’t sit down at the computer every morning, my half of the mortgage doesn’t get paid and the cats don’t get fed. I sometimes wonder where in the heck this diligence came from.
Sometimes I walk around the house and marvel at its very existence. The toys. The artwork. The books in the library. I often wonder how it all happened. How did a blithe spirit like me end up a responsible, contributing member of society? Was it my wife, my parents, my therapist — or was it me?
There must have been a day when I finally got fed up with the drinking and the gambling and the emotional anguish and realized that I wanted a different life. Becoming more interested in football and less interested in the fraternity, those are just frivolous hobbies that came and went. The diligence, on the other hand — that’s something I have a harder time explaining.
Are most people taught by their parents how to embark on their life, how to be spouses, and parents, and employees? Or do they innately figure it out as they go along? Was I just a late bloomer? I guess it doesn’t matter, because I eventually started realizing that my life as it was playing out wasn’t working, and the only one who could fix it was me.
Then I remember that my father, too, was self-employed. For all the ways in which he tolerated my goofing off, he also wordlessly taught me about how an adult takes care of his family. Even if it means working late, or working odd hours to suit your client rather than yourself.
I guess it just took me a little longer than everyone else for my life to shift from frivolity to fortitude, to turn from a child into an adult. But, much to my surprise, I finally did.
Seven Things That Really Frost Me About Middle Age
(originally published July 20, 2009; #13)
When I think back on some of the things I did to my body when I was younger — alcoholic binges, all-night poker games — I probably shouldn't be surprised that it's taking its revenge on me now when I'm most defenseless. Here are seven problems with my body that really make middle age a challenge.
After The Laughter Is Gone. There’s nothing more delightful than finding something so hilarious that you just descend into an uncontrollable paroxysm of laughter. Every so often, my wife and I will start dishing on someone or something and just fall into a state of uproariousness that won’t stop. The problem now is that, instead of laughing uncontrollably, I always end up coughing uncontrollably. That just hacks.
Back When My Back Was Young. I am astonished at how the slightest twist in the wrong direction can make my back not only twinge, but turn into some sort of spasm-inducing fiend bent on crumbling my evolutionary right to walk erect. When I was a teen-ager, there was a movie called Hot Rods To Hell. In it, Dana Andrews (on the downside of his career) played a man on a driving vacation with his family who