We (my wife and I) have a friend who is fifty years old today. She is having a party, and is clearly excited at the thought of having lived for half a century. There is going to be music, possibly dancing, and a food truck. She seems to feel it is a big deal.
We’ve RSVPed for the occasion and are looking forward to it. We don’t get out much and are anxious for a celebration.
Her excitement is almost palpable, even over the few electronic communications we’ve had. It is amusing to think of someone being so happy to hit such a dubious milestone. I was excited when I reached the grand old age of 19. That was the legal age to drink in Nebraska at the time. And it was the last time I remember any anticipation for a birthday. Since then, they’ve been a random mixture of average days, on a sliding scale of dismal to acceptable. I don’t even remember hitting fifty, and most of the time I’m not at all certain of how many birthdays I’ve had.
“Do you remember how old I am?” I will ask my wife while filling out an online survey or sending off for a beer rebate.
“You’re sixty-four.” She will say as she sighs and looks to the heavens for strength. Being married to me has really helped her re-establish a relationship with the All Mighty.
Consequently, I have a little difficulty understanding our friend’s thrill. While it is true, you’re only fifty once, depending on how you look at it the once lasts for 365 days, unless it’s a leap year when you get to be fifty for 366 days. Oh, how I envy those lucky bastards.
To put it in perspective, though. The Beatles (as a group, not a musical group, just a sampling of 4 people) have 8 children who are older than our friend, and the Rolling Stones… well, it’s hard to say, there are a lot of children, grandchildren and even a great grandchild or two, and it would take too long to check the years they were born.
In 1973, when our friend was born, my wife and I were in the 8th grade. At the time it was junior high, which was 7th and 8th grade. Now 6th and 7th and 8th grades have been assembled into a tidy package called middle school, at least I think that’s the line. The real point is when she was born, we were toiling with Spanish, algebra, American history, and classes too numerous and painful to remember.
Of course, being 13 and in 8th grade, we weren’t old enough to go see The Exorcist in theaters, which was the number one movie of the year. Just as well, really, I saw it several years later, and didn’t enjoy it too much. I’m not much for horror movies, and the implications in this one was uncomfortable, the devil is in the details, I guess.
Musically, in 1973, according to Billboard Year End Hot 100 singles, the saccharine infused “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn earned the #1 spot. Personally, I would have put #9 “You’re so Vain,” by Carly Simon above “Tie A Yellow Ribbon”. Music is much better when it contains a sharpened edge. Also, I would have had #16 “Frankenstein” by The Edgar Winter Group, a five-minute guitar solo rated higher. If they would have asked me, they didn’t, and why would they ask an overweight, pimply, awkward 8th grader from the Midwest which song should have been number one that year, I would have told them it had to be “Right Place, Wrong Time” by the fascinating, inscrutable, Dr. John. Since they didn’t ask me it ended up at #24. Which was the wrong place.
“Johnathan Livingston Seagull”, one of my personal favorites, spent 11 weeks atop the New York Times Best Seller list in 1973. Even my wife loved the book and she thought “Watership Down” was dreadful. “Hollow Hills” by Mary Stewart (the second book of a trilogy about Arthurian legends) also had an 11 week run, and “Breakfast of Champions” by Kurt Vonnegut was there for 10 weeks. Clearly people had good taste in literature. To counter the good, it was also the year J. R. R. Tolkien went to his greater reward.
Inflation tripled in 1973, there was an oil embargo and people were lined up around blocks to buy gasoline. Events that signaled the end of the post-World War II prosperity.
The Watergate “burglars” went on trial, the beginning of the end for President Nixon.
Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho won the Noble Prize for signing the Paris Peace Accords and giving Nixon the “Peace with Honor”, he kept harping about. Even though Americans and Vietnamese continued to die, or be maimed, or driven mad, for two more years. The last American soldiers killed in Vietnam were two marines who died in April 1975. The last names engraved into the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC (the names of the deceased are chronological) are three Air Force Security men who were on a rescue mission on the island of Koh Tang in Cambodia, May 1975. Killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Clearly 1973 was significant in so many ways. As a beginning, and an end. Most of it I forgot. Looking back has been fun, but it’s time to crawl back to the present, that odd, little sliver between the past and the future, where we will wait for our friend’s party. Birthdays aren’t really about the day you were born, or at least not the year. They are for the present, a precious moment that never lasts, gone before it starts, but it takes a whole year to arrive.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
