HOW TO KNOW YOU'RE OVER THE HILL

2010

Back in 2010 after we had moved out of New York to Madison and were trying to re-establish ourselves I started this blog using a tag line that jested of already having reached the pinnacle of being over the hill. It was meant as an indictment about how we're now riding the down side of a rollercoaster and it's moving at mach speed. The upside of this is the thrill you get with the downward rush, the downside is the ride is over way too quickly. I thought the tag line was a bit tongue in cheek and then I worried that there might actually be more truth than fiction here. Here are some of the reasons why I was concerned a decade ago that we were perhaps sliding down that rollercoaster rather than ascending it:

1. When your fourteen year-old daughter smirks at your bare legs accusing you of shaving them and you have to explain how several decades of wearing too tight jeans has rubbed the hair of you leg. Nature's depilatory has finally won out and now my legs are as smooth as an octogenarian's bottom.

2. When you take off for the supermarket because you ran out of toilet paper and all you come home with is a box of double cream filled Oreos.

3. When you think Leslie Jordan is beginning to look pretty hot.

4. When you realize you haven't changed your underwear in two days and you don't care because you know nobody else will.

5. When you can't read the chyron on your 52" HDTV even with your glasses on.

6. When the guy next door asks your partner if he can meet his dad and the dad turns out to be you.

7. When you realize you bought your winter dress coat in 1982 and you don't consider it be vintage.

8. When you walk past a plate glass window and assume the reflection peering back at you is some old homeless person wearing your clothes

9. When you hear Phil on Modern Family refer to WTF as "why the face" and you don't get the joke.

10. When your partner of thirty years calls you from his colonoscopy and says he has cancer*.

*Twelve years later and still cancer free and perhaps I was wrong a decade ago. Maybe we're still ascending.