For the first time, at the age of 42, Jamie Reidy is struggling with getting older.
It’s my birthday. And for some reason turning 42 is really resonating with me. 40 didn’t feel like this, but for some reason 42 has really hit me hard.
Maybe it’s because Jackie Robinson wore number 42 and it’s retired by all the teams and all the players in Major League Baseball except for Mariano Rivera, the Yankees’ closer who will retire after this year.
Maybe it’s the fact that 42nd Street is one of the most famous thoroughfares in the world?
How about forty-deuce? There aren’t any cool nicknames for 41… But 42 has the forty-deuce.
Lastly, I used to be a 42-Regular and now I’m a 41-Regular suit jacket, which mocks the fact that I’m not as macho as I used to be.
What age really resonated with you?
About Jamie Reidy
50…that’s when you really start to face your mortality. It’s sobering but liberating at the same time.
Wait a minute! Your complaining about ‘feeling old’ at 42? Ha ha, poor you! You said 40 was no big deal? Well,just wait ,50 is a sledgehammer between the eyes. It could be worse, at least you don’t make your living with your back. I’m reminded every day I go to work just how old I feel. LOL
42 is an important number!
It is the answer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” according to the popular science fiction series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
It is also the amount of time (in minutes) that it would take to “ghost fall” from any arbitrary point on the Earth’s surface, to any other arbitrary point on the Earth’s surface (if you turned into a ghost that could float through solid rock under the influence of gravity).
In summary, it is the perfect age to begin a great travel adventure, an odyssey that you would have been to immature to appreciate at age 41, and too old to undertake at age 43!
Bon voyage!
Jamie, you’ve gotta think about it differently:
You’re not forty-two.
You’re thirty-twelve.
You guys all make great points! Thanks for reading and commenting. Oh, and I am now so psyched for 50.
41 Regular? 1) Eat. 2) Spend more time in the weight room with iron than in the cardio room preaching your gospel to your flock of female followers. I can’t believe you’re the guy who once outmuscled me up and down Stepan Court! I want a rematch as I have been crafting my physique more after Magic (Part Deux as a Power Forward) than your Shawn Bradleyness.
As for your comments above, I can relate as a fellow unattached, almost 42 year old male with a shaved heac (so it looks like a choice instead of God’s will for me). While nearly everyone in my life over these past twenty years has “settled”, I have been labeled everything from a dreamer and an idealist to a pathetic nomad. I am sure that the truth is somewhere in the middle of those things, but this I do know: when the heat comes down, I am always able to get out in 30 seconds (or less) as per the advice of Neil in “Heat”.
After 15 years of college-level teaching, I decided that my whole career has been nonsense and a waste of time so I don’t do that anymore (and have the financial records to prove it!). There is no way that a wife who wasn’t 100% in love with me, materialistic kids (pardon the redundancy) and set of SQM-mish (status quo maintaining) lifestyle choices would tolerate such an income-eliminating change of heart. When that heat came down, I was able to get out and pursue real happiness.
Will I find it? To be honest, even as I realize that my best days as an “athlete” and with “the ladies” are in my rearview mirror, I’m not sure that I haven’t already found it. Check in with me again on the day after i actually turn 42.