D  e  s  e  r  t     E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e    March 2006

The Big 5-Oh

You're not getting older, you're getting—well, er, older. Who's kidding whom here?

What is it about these round-numbered anniversaries or—especially—birthdays? Turning 39 brings you one year closer to using up your Biblical three-score-years-and-ten, after all, as turning 40. (If more of us stuck to that 70-year life expectancy, by the way, the Social Security system would be a lot more solvent. Wonder why the president hasn't pulled Psalms 90:10 out of his pocket as he has other "faith-based" policy?)

Even that "three score years and ten" emphasizes a factor of 10, just like "don't trust anybody over 30" and the AARP's insistence on age 50—damn their acronymed souls!—for membership. Why not 51? Heck, the "RP" used to stand for "Retired Persons" before the AARP decided to go with initials only. Many might wish we could retire at 50, but lately "three score years and ten" is looking like a more realistic retirement goal.

But there's no escaping the tyranny of round numbers. When you hit 40, suddenly your carefree youth is behind you. Now that the first of the Baby Boomers is hitting 60, we're deluged with magazine covers proclaiming that "60 Is the New 40!" (But I'll bet Mick Jagger's joints know otherwise.) If you live to 100, you can get your birthday mentioned on the "Today Show." Make it to 101? Nobody cares. Drop us a postcard at 110 if you're still spry enough to lick a stamp.

It's the big 5-0, though, that's, well, big, birthdaywise. Regular readers will recall last year at about this time that I wailed about getting my invitation to AARP membership a year early (the bastards!). So if you've paid close attention, both to this column and to elementary-school arithmetic class, you'll realize that this month marks the big 5-Oh for me.

Fifty. There, I've said it. (Well, typed it, which is almost the same thing.) I'm all yours, AARP! Although, if 60 is the new 40, doesn't that make 50 the new 30?

The truth is, I don't feel all that different about the prospect of turning 50. Maybe it just hasn't hit me yet, and I'll wake up on my actual birthday with the screaming heebie-jeebies and a full-blown midlife crisis. (Technically, again, I guess 50 is past midlife and I've already missed my chance to get Botox and a trophy wife.) All the same, I am of course milking this milestone birthday for all it's worth: "Hey, a guy only turns 50 once!" Never mind that the same could be said about 47.

Looking up that Biblical life-expectancy reference did, however, lead me, via the magic of the Internet, to something called the "BBC Interactive Life-Expectancy Calculator:"

www.bbc.co.uk/health/interactive_area/calculators_lifeexpectancy1.shtml.

You answer 21 simple questions and bingo, it tells you how long you'll live. Being on the BBC Web site, the calculator is studded with references to "pubs" and "chips," but I don't suppose that makes it inaccurate for us Yanks. Besides, I was able to answer no to "Do you smoke, chew tobacco, inhale snuff, or are you often around second-hand smoke (in pubs or at work)?" as well as to the question about fried foods ("e.g. chips").

Twenty-one questions later, though, I was starting to ponder casket choices—classic pine or upscale maple?—as the site churned out its calculation: 80.6 years. So I have 30.6 years to go (and you'd better believe I'm going to hang onto those extra 0.6 years for all they're worth!). Yikes. Was that a British-accented Grim Reaper that just walked over my as-yet-undug grave? ("Hullo, mate. See you in 30.6 years, old chap! Mind you stay away from the chips!")

Before I turn my attention to picking out coffin linings—red is so garish, don't you think?—I guess I ought to use this landmark birthday for some introspection and soul-searching (while, that is, my soul is still attached to my body). Fifty years is a long time, after all. Half a century. Born when Eisenhower was president—and, given the state of today's education system, most kids probably don't even know who Eisenhower was any more. Man had yet to walk on the moon and women had yet to burn their bras. "Captain Kangaroo" had just started on TV—and most of those TVs were still black and white.

Good Lord, I'm ancient!

So what, if anything, have I accomplished in my five decades? I think we can skip the first decade, though learning to tie my shoes was a pretty big deal; I no longer list that on my resume, however.

Thinking about what you've done with your life does inevitably start to feel like writing a resume. You start ticking off all the things you've done—and all the things left undone. I don't think I gave much thought to turning 50 when I was, say, 20, but I'm pretty sure that I expected by now to have become a successful science-fiction novelist. (At age 10—well, OK, 15—the anticipated resume would also have included "Superhero—Fought for truth, justice and the American way.") Somehow that didn't work out, as I discovered I'm much better writing about things that really happened than making stuff up.

Not that I'm saddled with regrets, careerwise, though if I had the chance to do it all again I might wish to be savvier about a few former bosses and corporate higher-ups. Still, if I'd known when I was 20 and avidly scouring each issue of Writer's Digest magazine and highlighting Writer's Market, in search of places to reject my science-fiction stories, that one day I'd be in charge of both publications for awhile—well, I think my 20-year-old self would think that was pretty cool. (Yes, we said things like "cool" back in the Dark Ages, as in, "Cool dinosaur you speared, man!") And I did manage to get three books published, even though none had a title like Robot Warriors of Jupiter. (Come to think of it, maybe the one stuck with the awful title Elements of Article Writing: Structure and Flow would have sold better with robots and Jupiter in the title instead.)

I confess, I love mentioning that I've published articles in both Reader's Digest and Playboy—talk about spanning the gamut! Every year, too, I take a childish delight—mingled with astonishment—when the letter comes asking me to update my biography for the new edition of Who's Who in America. Somehow, years ago, I got on Who's Who's radar and have been listed ever since, despite never once having bitten on their countless offers to sell me books, plaques, "Who's Who in America" commemorative pens and, for all I know (I just throw the offers away), ballcaps and undershirts.

(If you work for "Who's Who" and are reading this online, I promise I'll buy the book and five ballcaps next year—honest! Just don't delist me! I'm turning 50—memories and my listing are all I have!)

But all that resume stuff begins to seem less important as you get older—and especially once you become your own boss, thank goodness. I've gotten pretty lax even about updating my resume—or my "c.v." as they say in academe, which I think is just an excuse to boast about yourself for a couple more pages. Minor honors that once would have hit the resume before the ink dried on the certificate—"Fourth Place, Best Article Celebrating America's Love Affair with Pork, Iowa I Heart Pork Council"—get shuffled to the bottom of the "to-do" pile, which turns into the "throw away later" pile.

Looking back from the wise old age of 50, the accomplishments that seem most important aren't the stuff that resumes are made of. Rather, they're the stuff of corny greeting cards: Being married to the same wonderful woman for 28 years next June. (Just kidding about that "trophy wife" thing, honey. Honey?) Raising a daughter who's navigated the tough growing-up years without hitting most of the rocks so many kids crash upon. Reaching 50 and being able to think of a lot of things I'm proud of, and not too many I'm ashamed of.

Life is a work in progress, after all, and I figure I have another 30.6 years or so—more if I can stay away from the "pubs" and "chips"—to get it right. I treasure everything I've learned—even those lessons gained the hard way—over the past 50 years. So the prospect of turning 50 doesn't actually scare me, not so much. What would terrify me would be having to go back to age 20 or so without everything I've figured out since then.

Nope, I don't envy our 22-year-old daughter her youth one bit. Next time she comes to visit, I plan to whip out my AARP card, just to make her jealous: Fifty, baby, the big 5-Oh.

Desert Exposure editor David A. Fryxell is currently in training to be able to blow out all those candles on his birthday cake.

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