Over the Hill?

Last May I turned the big 4-0. I can’t say I was too broken up about it. In fact I had no problem with it at all. I like being 40. I’ve got a wonderful family, a career I love, and I’ve got my health. I got lucky with the first one but had to work hard for the last two. Can anyone ask for more than that? I also had a birthday bash for the ages, at a trendy downtown Minneapolis restaurant with about 70 of my friends and family. Well, I really don’t have any friends and my family doesn’t like me much, but I’m smart enough to know if I offer free food and booze all night I’ll get a lot of people to show up! I even did a little artwork for my invitation:

Like I said, turning 40 was a non-issue for me. I know a lot of people talk about men having a mid-life crisis, but I don’t see it happening to me. True, I do have a little convertible sports car, a classic sign of the mid-life crisis. Yes, I spend a lot of time in the gym pumping iron and working out with a trainer, another common sign of the mid-life crisis. I even recently had another neighbor, who has a hair salon in her basement, cut and color my hair to reduce the gray, a SURE sign of a mid-life crisis…. hmmmmm…. wait a minute. Maybe I’d better think about this. NAAAAHHHH! Except for the color job I was doing all those things way before I started getting old. When I start seriously considering some of the two dozen “Viagra” spams I get a day with advertising pitches like: “Take the blue pill, and we’ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes!”, then I’ll start getting concerned. Until then, 40 is the new 39!

Now it’s my lovely wife Anna’s turn to have her 40th Birthday. One of her good friends and neighbor Kim Gerkin??ᬨ‚Ćis also turning 40 about two weeks earlier than Anna, so we are having a joint birthday party for the two of them on September 30th. I worked this little doodle up for their invite on Monday (Anna on the left):

Of course, plenty of people like Kim and Anna, so they don’t really need to supply the food and booze to have a big party, but we will anyway just because. When she saw the art, Kim commented on the voluptuously sexy body I gave my wife, to which I replied: “do I LOOK stupid???” I have a penchant for sleeping in my bed and not the dog house, which would be especially uncomfortable since we have a cat, not a dog. If you are a caricaturist, having to draw your relatives should trigger a red alert in your head, flashing “DANGER! DANGER!” in big bright letter across the inside of your eyeballs. Very complicated. Best to feign some illness like bubonic plague to get out of doing such a drawing. Anna fortunately has a wonderful sense of humor, and she knows that I really do see her that way whether she’s fitting into last year’s jeans or not.

40 is the prime of life. I’ll let you know about 50 in a decade or so. Don’t rush me.