MIDDLE AGE BLUES

I’ll be turning 50 in exactly six months. This means I’ll officially become a middle aged man.

Now, that’s not quite true, is it? If you reach middle age when you turn 50, this must mean you are expected to live to be at least a hundred, and unless you’re a fisherman living off salmon and tuna on the North coast of Japan, the chances of this happening are about 1 in 100.000.000, or, in layman terms, roughly the same chances that World War III will start as a consequence of French troops invading Germany.

This means that not only I’m already a middle aged man, but that I have been one for quite a while.

This is difficult for me to accept. I still love rock ’n roll and own every record and DVD ever released by Led Zeppelin. Now, that doesn’t help my case, does it? Jimmy Page is 69 and Robert Plant looks like a mummy from the British Museum, but with the bandages off. That throws my argument out the window.

You realise how old you are when you notice that there are now wars in countries that didn’t even exist when you were a kid. Instead of Yugoslavia you now have Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia (are there any more?). The same goes for the ancient Czechoslovakia, and don’t get me started with the former USSR. When I was young, I remember reading somewhere there were 120 countries in the world, and as of last count, there are at least 200 now. Yes, the world has regurgitated at least 80 countries in my life span.

Putting my new-countries-in-my-lifetime counter and my grandfather-rock ’n roll-bands aside, the worst part of being middle aged is the physical aspect. The wisest piece of advise my dad ever gave read something like this: “Son, after 40, when you wake up in the morning and nothing hurts, you’re dead” This is completely true. There’s hardly a part of my body that doesn’t hurt or hasn’t been affected in any way. I think I’m close to proving wrong those scientist that claim the human body contains only 206 bones. Hell, I have at least 300 joints in my body and they all hurt!!!

After I established I was officially middle aged, I went to the doctor in order to have a check up. Besides the stethoscope thing and the annoying little hammer to the knee, he ordered a list of tests which involved mostly poking through all my body cavities with fingers or kilometres of plastic tubes and little cameras.

After much procrastinating and excuses of every sort, I ended up booking these tests. Some of them requiring serious preparation, including drinking stuff that helped me cleanse my intestines by turning my body into a rocket in launching mode. I had my prostate, urinary tract, colon and several other internal organs I never even knew existed fondled, pinched, molested, photographed and videotaped, and they all fared very well. I’m very proud of my internal organs.

Besides the tests, the doctor gave me a list of all the things I shouldn’t eat, which comprised largely of everything with flavour in it.

It seems that when you reach middle age your metabolism slows down to the equivalent of, and this is in strict medical terms, a slug affected by sciatica, therefore your body takes much longer to process food. The doctor told me there was a good chance my body was still trying to digest meat pies I ate during the AFL Grand Final last year. From now on, my diet will consist mainly of grapefruit and lettuce.

The worst part of it all, is that I’ll have to go through most of this again in the next couple of years. I just need time to build up some courage and give the bad news to my organs.

But now I need to run. It appears there’s a war and Bosnia and Herzegovina are now parting ways.

I need to update my counter.