A pirate looks at 39

In about six more hours, the sun will set on my 39th birthday.

As milemarkers go, 39 isn't one of the big ones. For one thing, it doesn't end in zero like many landmark ages and anniversaries. And while it does lie at the very cusp of middle age, it's not an age particularly noted for anything.

At 16, I got my first driver's license. At 18, I received legal recognition as an adult. When she was 25, Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne and ultimately became one of the best-loved and most powerful monarchs of England. At the age of 33, Alexander the Great had lain the foundations for what eventually would become modern Western civilization. But 39? That one's noteworthy only for being a year short of 40.

And that's essentially how I feel right now: that I'm staring down the barrel of 40 years old, and in another year it's going to blow my head off.

Six years ago, when I turned 33, I observed how nice it would be on my deathbed to quip that I had missed the best years of my career because I had spent them all with my children. Well, mission accomplished: Five years ago, I grabbed my career by its halter and led it to a place behind the stable, where I shot and killed it. Only, recently, I woke up and found its head on the pillow next to me.

Looking back I don't feel that I have much cause for regret. The past five years have been spent almost exclusively in the company of two children whom I have taught to read, whose scraped knees I have kissed, whose laughter has given me wings and whose razor-sharp tears have stripped me to the bone. I have sung with them, danced in their company, delighted in their artwork, and learned some of the most poignant and important lessons of love and life at their feet.

For their sake, I have served three years on the school board. For love of them, I have walked around in public with bows in my hair. I have scheduled my days around taking them to school, to the doctor's office, to friends' houses, and to art and ballet lessons. I have carried them on my shoulders, in my arms, and upon my back. Most of all I have carried them in my heart with such an earnestness that it has hurt.

I've received no salary for this new career, save in the only currency my children know: the tireless love and affection that they shower upon me.

It has been almost enough.

I only started to appreciate how much my career change to stay-at-home dad has cost me last Thursday, when I was talking to a friend. Only a few years older than I, Sonja is in the midst of a mid-life career change, to art history. She had just been offered an entry-level position, and she was thrilled. As she put it, it was difficult enough to compete with twentysomethings while she was in her 40s. There would be no way to start over again in her 50s.

There was a time when the world was an oyster with unlimited potential that I could crack with my good right hand. Now I am uncomfortably aware that a crocodile has eaten my right hand, and if I listen, I can hear the ticking of the clock that tells me the crocodile is coming back for the rest.

I have at most five, maybe six, years to begin my next career in earnest. Anything beyond that, and the odds stacked against my success will increase steadily with each year. So what's it going to be? Will I return to teaching? Will I return to writing news and feature stories, to magazines, or to editing and teaching other writers their wordcraft? I've done all of those, and I've done them well. On days when my neck doesn't feel the pinch of the blue monster, I am confident I can do them again.

Or maybe I should do something new. I could turn my blog into something with meaning and purpose that stretches beyond my fancy of the day, I could found an arts magazine with the local focus that I understand so well, or I could turn my full attention to my fledgling public relations business and make a living on that.

Whatever it is, I had better decide soon. That crocodile loved the taste of my hand, and he's definitely coming back for more.

What I really want, my driving passion, is not just to be a writer, but to be an author as well. The stories I can tell, the stories I need to tell, are stories that can inspire laughter, tears, longing and regret. Stories are the vehicle I use to teach the great truths that I have learned, and I want desperately to do nothing more than to take the sacred space at the head of my classroom and begin to teach.

Now, nearly five years after I left the workforce to spend more time with my children and complete the great novel that has been my ambition since middle school, I can safely say that I have spent more time with my children. The great novel, like many of my other children, lies gasping for breath in a pauper's field while I concoct excuse after excuse for not working to save it.

Three years ago, I wrote about my experience with cancer and the uncomfortable reminder it brought of my own mortality and how badly I had done on completing my life's most important work. Now three years later, I am shamed once again by how little I have changed. Age, like cancer once did, is awakening me to how briefly the candle flickers upon the stage before it disappears in a wisp of smoke.

If God is gracious, and if I am wise enough to accept that grace, I know that I can write and publish a few books in the years that lie before me, and I can give birth to many of the stories that have gestated within my mind all these years. I may even enjoy that moderate success that other writers have found, where they are not really household names, but they do enjoy a loyal following.

Whether I succeed or fail as a writer in large part depends on forces that are hardly mine to command, but I have seen the past 39 years that God prefers it when we give him something – anything – to work with.

In another 30 years, or 40 if I am lucky, I will ring down the curtain as everyone before me has done, and will exit the stage while younger performers put on their shows. When that day comes and the critics take stock of my life's work, I want to stand behind all my children and proudly say, “See what I have done with what I was given. I have been here, and I have mattered; not a thing has been wasted.”

That would be a good life.



Copyright © 2009 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'Tehanu' and defining ourselves as we grow older

I just finished reading Ursula LeGuin's "Tehanu" tonight, the fourth book in her "Earthsea" series.

Previous books in the series have followed Ged, a wizard from a cluster of islands similar to Polynesia, where magic derives its power from learning the true names of things. The books rely on Jungian archetypes, and it's significant that naming a thing indicates authority over it and effectively neutralizes the power it has.

In "A Wizard of Earthsea," Ged comes not only into his power but into his weakness when he discovers the name of his greatest foe. In "The Tombs of Atuan," naming allows him to free a young woman whose identity has been consumed by a malicious cult. In "The Farthest Shore," it also helps him to repair tremendous damage done to the natural world by a man who sought to best death and make himself immortal.

"Tehanu" has a markedly different writing style from the earlier Earthsea novels, which undoubtedly reflects LeGuin's growth as a writer and the life she has lived since she wrote the original trilogy. While the earlier books showed us a hero who was balanced and in tune with himself, "Tehanu" shows us that balance lost.

This book deals with how identity -- our very selves, what might be the truest name for ourselves -- changes as we age, and yet remains tethered to who we were as children, quite apart from all the things we thought provided our identity in our adulthood.

"Tehanu" isn't about Ged, or at least, not primarily. He's a supporting character in this book, which centers on Tenar, also called Arya, whom Ged rescued from the cult in "The Tombs of Atuan."

In Ged's case, his sense of self is in jeopardy because he lost his wizarding abilities after the events of "The Farthest Shore," and he's been a potent wizard since he was an adolescent. For Tenar, the loss is that she is a widow with grown children, and her own childhood was taken from her by the priestesses of the Nameless Ones in "The Tombs of Atuan."

The struggle for both of them is to redefine themselves, to find their own new names in a world where they either have no names or the world insists on calling them by names that no longer have meaning.

Along on this journey with them is a child whom Tenar has cared for, for the past year, a girl whose parents pushed her into a fire and left her there to die. This girl's identity is unknown to any of them, and she is known only by the name Tenar gave her, Therru, a name that means fire.

It's been a long time -- nearly 20 years -- since I read LeGuin's "Earthsea" novels, but this has been a welcome return, both for me and for my wife, who read them only in the past 12 months. Perhaps because I'm 38, and I'm already seeing how my own identity has begun to shift as I've become first a husband and now a father twice over, the disorientation that both Tenar and Ged experience is something that I understand.

After all, when we're children, we identify ourselves by what we do. In early adulthood, we find our identities in who we are. In adulthood, we finally understand that our identities are something that exists not in isolation, but in our relationships with one another.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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The first chills of autumn come in summer

Life comes in stages, not all of them pleasant.

Ten to fifteen years ago everyone I knew was getting married. The year Natasha and I tied the knot, there were three other couples we were friends with who made it official.

The weddings were followed within a few years by a prolonged slew of babies. My brother Herb and his wife, Pam, had a son. Natasha and I followed less than a year later with Evangeline. Then Ward and his wife, Rhoda, had a daughter. All told there are five little Learnlings running around right now, though the youngest is 5.

Last year I noticed a number of my friends were separating and getting divorced. The marriages that were pledged to last the rest of their lives were coming crashing down around them, and one by one, they were deciding to leave.

And now, while it is still summer, I can feel the first chill of autumn as wind stirs in the leaves overhead.

I buried an aunt last year, followed by an uncle. We buried Natasha's mother this summer, taken by an early frost. Now I have another aunt in Georgia who has been given two to eight weeks to live.

And my own parents, who at 68 have had good innings, are no longer as young as they once were. They're both slowing down, and though they've been there my whole life, it's increasingly plain to see that they won't be there forever.

The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, and as the day ends, all slips into darkness. This too is meaningless.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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rolling my chronometer upward

Today, August 24, is my birthday. I am turning 38. I therefore am inviting everyone who reads this blog to join in celebrating this annual event in the manner that seems most appropriate.
Some suggestions:

1. Go on a pub crawl in my honor.
2. Visit the library and lose yourself in a dozen good books.
3. Go see "The Dark Knight."
4. Take up either suborbital skydiving, or parasailing in the upper Jovian atmosphere.
5. Write a letter to George W, Bush, asking if there is any loose change under the White House sofa cushions that you can have.
6. Rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
7. Put on patriotic costume, and go out and fight crime.
8. Make "Hussein" your middle name.
9. Sit on a Whoopee Cushion during silent prayer at church.
10. While out in public, turn to an unsuspecting member of the opposite sex and say, very loudly, "Motel room? Why do you want me to go to a motel room with you?"

Please note that Suggestion 10 also has a comical effect during silent prayer at church, but is likely to have you ejected from the service.

and so it begins...

This week brought the best evidence yet that middle age is not as far off as it used to be.

It was Tuesday afternoon and I was trying to shepherd Evangeline and Rachel out of the school, dealing with one thing and another. They had to go to the bathroom. They had to get a drink. They had to say goodbye to Rachel's buddy Eliza. Rachel didn't have her sweatshirt. Evangeline didn't have her backpack.

"Where's your backpack?" I asked. She looked at me as if I were crazy. "Where's your backpack?" I repeated tersely. Still no answer, just a blank look. "Evangeline!" I fairly snapped. "Where is your backpack?"

"You're holding it," she said, and at last I followed her gaze to my left hand. There, dangling from two fingers, was Evangeline's Spider-Man backpack.

"Oh," I said, not really sure how to recover from that, but suddenly identifying very closely with my mother. "Right."

I haven't reached the top of the hill, and I'm definitely not over it yet, but there's no question that I've started to climb.

anachronisms

Several weeks ago I had to come to the rescue of our pastor, who was trying to explain record players to a college student. She would not believe anything he said about 33s, 45s, or the way you had to twist the knobby thing in the middle of the turntable so it could play the other sort of record. Even with two of us insisting that this was how it had been when we were children, she remained skeptical.

Similarly, at the preschool Rachel attended, her classroom had a record player that the teachers used for some of the activities. I once asked the teacher if she explained it to the kids as "This is what an iPod looked like when your parents were your age."

knees

I took Evangeline for a bike ride this evening after dinner. With my bike still out of commission, this meant my usual trick of walking and sometimes running after her.

 

Two years ago, when Evangeline was in kindergarten, I gave myself bursitis by giving her a piggyback ride up a steep hill while visiting a Revolutionary encampment in Jockey Hollow. Since then, my right knee has been more inclined than before toward objecting some efforts to walk. In the past few weeks, it's twice nearly thrown me to the ground, once walking down the street when I stepped wrong on the sidewalk, and the second time when I tried to do the chicken dance.

 

Today, I was chasing her across the street, not one but both knees acted as though someone had just kicked me in the kneecaps. It was all I could do to stop from falling down in the crosswalk, and I walked funny for several minutes afterward. Even now, five hours later, they still hurt a little.

 

What's up with that?

no longer young, still stupid

On Monday this week, I was reminded once again that my youth is beating a hasty retreat before the advancing forces of middle age.

 

When I was growing up in Saunders Station, Pa., one of the highlights of the year was the annual pilgrimage to Kennywood Park, the self-professed roller coaster capital of the world. With perennial favorites like the Jackrabbit, the Thunderbolt, and the Racer, it was the place to go. Even all-out losers like Melvin Fenwick, the boy who got his underpants caught in the Velcro of his shoes in sixth grade and whom it took three teachers seven minutes to set him loose -- yes, even he went to Kennywood.

 

I haven't been to Kennywood since perhaps the first year I was married to Natasha, but I still have fond memories of the many summer hours I spent there, including on rides like the Enterprise, which turned me upside-down and relied on centrifugal force to keep me there. Just reminiscing about these rides has me looking forward to this August, when we hope to make the journey from Iowa to Pittsburgh and I expect to initiate Evangeline and possibly Rachel into these sacred mysteries.

 

Alas, the events of Monday suggest that I may not handle them as well as I once did.

 

On Monday, Natasha's Aunt Beatrice took the four of us on a visit to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, N.J. There she treated the girls to a ride on a helicopter, and bought $100 worth of tickets for the rides, which included a carousel, a roller coaster or two, and the other sort of Tilt-and-Whirl amusements you would expect to find at a tourist trap marring an otherwise pleasant beach. (Though to be honest, the casinos were far worse.)

 

The four of us -- Aunt B sat this one out, having fared poorly with the kiddie roller coaster she went on with Rachel -- went on a ride that goes along a circular track, spinning the cars wildly in one direction and then another. I've been on many such rides in my youth, and always enjoyed it.

 

The first time the car changed its spin, I felt my stomach heave viciously. The soft pretzel I had eaten a piece of an hour earlier began to clamor for fresh air. I closed my eyes, shutting out all sight of the wildly careening landscape, and tried to imagine myself astride a giant snail, sitting on a lawnchair reading the newspaper, stuck at a traffic light -- anything that didn't involve motion. I imagined that this exercise would help, and I suppose it did, marginally.

 

When the ride finished, I climbed out of the car, and took hold of the railing to steady myself. The world was still, and so was I, and all was well. The pretzel repeated its request for fresh air and a view of the outside world, but my resolve held. I walked with my family to a three-dimensional maze of tunnels, steps and slides, a giant Habitrail for children who think they are hamsters, and watched my children disappear into its labyrinthine corridors. All was steady.

 

And then, five minutes later, Aunt B clapped her hands and walked toward the maze. The pretzel made its request, the motion carried, and the unprecedented happened: I threw up after an amusement park ride.

 

I haven't given up hope for a Kennywood visit this August, but I will say this: When the girls finished off the evening with a ride on the carousel, I stood on the ground and watched.

over 30 syndrome

It's pretty dreadful, really. If you were cool, you stop; and if you weren't, you're totally screwed. Pop culture references are lost on you, your own pop culture references are hopelessly obscure, the newest technology fascinates you in an abstract way but not in a way that makes you go out and get it, and you start to realize that you're still in the same place you were 10 years ago, even in ways that do matter.

I think I've had it for going on six years or so.

Some of the symptoms I've manifested:

• I have one of those superslow Dial Up connections. There are no plans to get a cable modem or DSL.
• I don't have an iPod. If I did, I probably would consider it my widescreen TV set.
• I have never burned a CD of music I downloaded from the Internet.
• At church, I often feel that the worship is too loud and hurts my ears. (I also miss the good old days when we sang hymns.)
• Not only do I lack a cell phone, I'm constantly amazed to hear the new things they can do. (Did you know that you can use them as calculators? My wife just told me.)
• Rather than buy new books, I visit the librarian.

Despite having Over 30 Syndrome, I'm generally able to hold my own in most conversation. I can talk politics, religion, the environment, literature and several other topics with a degree of competence, and comport myself respectably.

When the conversation drifts into pop culture, though, I'm at something of a loss. I don't go see the new hot movies -- I usually wait until they come out on DVD -- so I recently was left cold when someone alluded to "Pirates of the Caribbean 2." I responded with my own allusion to "Ghostbusters 2," and unfortunately I looked like a doofus in both cases.

Now I know why you should never trust anyone over 30. It's because they're hopelessly out of touch with reality.

Happy birthday to me

We had a wonderful time on my birthday yesterday. My wife gave me a couple cardboard boxes and newspaper that the girls put presents inside, and they thought it was tremendous when I put a bubblewrap mailing envelope on my head for a "birthday hat."

The presents from the girls included a JMS Spider-Man trade paperback that reinterprets the death of Gwen Stacy, and reveals that she had children before she died, and a Simpsons Seaon 5 DVD set. Very nice, though I've been thinking lately how much I don't need more CDs or particularly need birthday presents.

Being married to my wife and having those two girls made this one of the best birthdays I can imagine.

And, as is customary for our marriage, I made dinner and baked my own birthday cake.

bursitis

Worst part of pre-patella bursitis:

• Having a knee swollen to the size of a grapefruit


• Spending six hours at the hospital, in one of those designer gowns


• Having a doctor jab your swollen and tender knee joint to drain fluid


• Getting highly irritated underarms from using crutches


• Wearing a leg immobilizer


• Children who complain that you cry when they sit on your affected knee


• Inability to help rebuild Temple in Jerusalem

Vote in the poll!

I've been in worse shape -- the times I had amebic dysentery, and dengue fever spring to mind -- but to tell the truth, I feel fairly rotten.

We took the girls up to Morristown National Park on Sunday to see the Revolutionary War encampments at Jocky Hollow and to see the Wick house, where Tempe Wick lived. (There's a neat story about Tempe that Evangeline recently read as part of our study on the Revolution, and she's been begging to go see the house ever since she realized that it was a real place.)

My best guess is that I put some undue stress on my right knee when I carried Evangeline up a fairly steep hill to the (presumably rebuilt) cabins used by the Pennsylvania Line soldiers. Sunday evening my knee was becoming fairly uncomfortable, and around 4 a.m. Monday, it hurt so much that it woke me up. By morningtime, it was visibly swollen, red, and warm to the touch.

I ended up going to the doctor that afternoon, and he concerned enough he sent me to the emergency room with the warning that I might be there overnight, or longer. It turns out he was concerned they might have to operate on my knee.

Luckily, and I use the term with a measure of irony, all that happened is they drained some of the fluid from the joint to perform a culture, gave me an antibiotic IV drip and left me shivering in that stupid gown for about two hours until I reminded them that I would really, really like a blanket. (It took another two hours before I got them to understand that I really, really had to pee.)

The long and short of it is that I have bursitis, and am taking Keflex to kill the infection. I've developed a slight fever, have sore spots from the crutches and my knee is in steady pain. I'm also tired all the time, which is ironic, because I don't feel "sick," if you know what I mean.

Luckily, and this time I use the term with a smaller measure of irony, my mother came up today, with plans to stay for the next week since I'm unable to drive comfortably, even if I take my knee out of the leg brace.

The worst part has been that my girls are fascinated with the leg brace and have tried to play with it and with my leg. Ruth sat on my knee twice yesterday, and Evangeline unwittingly kicked in a few times. Today, Ruth kept trying to climb all over me, so I switched sofas. She immediately complained: "No, daddy, I want to climb down your leg!"

Sigh.

Still, it's nice to know that I have friends. Because Natasha was unable to pick me up at the hospital, she asked a friend if he could, and although the hour was late, he was more than happy to do it. Tonight he called just to ask how I was feeling.

I made up a list of reasons psoriasis was a good thing to have, a while ago. Now I'm trying to come up with a similar list of reasons to have bursitis. There has to be something good about it, although it is hard to appreciate when your knee looks big and round enought to be the grapefruit on someone's breakfast table.

the party's over

As I write this we are in the process of recovering from the 5-2 celebration we had here today. We celebrated Evangeline's fifth birthday and Rachel's second, with Rachel's celebration coming only one day ahead of her actual birthday.

What a great time!

I have now formally surrended in the fight to keep Barbie out of our house for as long as possible, that time now apparently having passed. E got two Barbie dolls this summer, which pretty much signaled the beginning of the end. The girls have fought more frequently and more contentiously over who gets to play with the two Barbies and with Ariel than anything.

Today, E and R opened their presents from their Grandma H and found not only a new Barbie for each of them, but new outfits that fit their old dolls as well. (For the first time in months, Ariel and Barbie are no longer lounging around the house naked, trying to seduce Moon Knight.)*

Additionally, when we have our smaller family gift-giving tomorrow, R is going to discover the Barbie doll that Daddy bought her last month, in foolish oblivion to his mother-in-law's designs. Five Barbies, an Ariel and a Belle who walks around wearing nothing but her corset should be enough for a two-girl family, I reckon. Especially since the girls also have taken to playing with Moon Knight recently.

R blew everyone away while unwrapping her presents today, when she opened a package from her Auntie Audra and discovered her own princess doll. "It's Snow White!" she said, clear as a bell of purest crystal. I am happy to report that although Snow White and Barbie briefly switched outfits this evening, she is still wearing clothes. Moon Knight reportedly is disappointed, but is happy he will not need to be increase his cold shower regimen in the near future.

And naturally the fight we had to break up tonight was over who got to sleep with Snow White.

E's favorite gift today appears to be a queen outfit, complete with a gown, a crown and nice queen shoes. After the party had ended, the first thing she did was to change out of her dress and into her royal attire. Quite a sight too -- we took a picture which I may someday share here if I ever get around to it. Other gifts received today include early reader books, books that Daddy can read to her and loads of art supplies, since E is our little artiste.

The present that most amused me is the new Lite Brite. It's battery-operated, which is annoying since we'll need to replace batteries quite often, I should think, but it's also portable (being battery-operated, duh) and -- this is the amusing part -- is billed as "flat screen." Some friends of ours and I were joking that it's the new hi-tech Lite Brite. It's cable ready, and has a high-density plasma screen for you to use when you stick plastic pins through construction paper.

Something like 17 kids came, plus their parents and the Reading Fairy, which made our house one crowded, happening place. On top of that, the pizzeria where we usually order our pizza apparently is closed, so we had to scramble at the last minute to find a new place to order seven pies -- and they forgot to include the sausage on one pizza, even though they still billed us for it.

Ah well. At least no one gave us an Elmo toy.

* Moon Knight, as in the Marvel Comics split-personality superhero who functions as a Batman rip-off, blessed with superpowers by Konshu, an Egyptian moon god I never heard of outside "Moon Knight" and "West Coast Avengers." I have an action figure of him, who apparently has been ready to give his right arm to spend some quality time with Barbie, since that's precisely the appendage that came off him today as he was rescuing Barbie from some monster or another.

growing in contentment

As I write this, my 33rd birthday slowly but surely is slipping further and further into the past.

Thirty-three doesn't seem like a particularly significant milestone. For one thing, it lacks that ending zero we usually associate with landmark ages and anniversaries. Additionally, while it's too far up to be considered truly young, it's also shy of what we generally consider middle-age, and nowhere near old.

Still, it's definitely something. When he died at the age of 33, Alexander the Great had conquered most of the ancient world, spreading the Greek language across three continents and seeding civilizations from Egypt to India with pockets of Hellenistic thought.

By the time of his death in 323 B.C., Alexander the Great had lain the foundations for what eventually would become modern Western civilization. In contrast, I'm the managing editor of two weekly newspapers and like to make fun of inspirational e-mail. Somehow, that just doesn't seem all that impressive by comparison.

Three years ago, when I turned 30, I made an ironic list of ways I would live m life differently if I were given the chance. Two of my favorite regrets were that I had tried to do something self-fulfilling rather than making millions of dollars, and that I had engaged immediately in trying to make the world a better place rather than saving such altruism for my retirement years.

Three years later, I'm still not very close to making it big. As any career journalist will admit, this is not a profession that pays especially well. The salary is hard to quantify, but it's somewhere between "diddly" and "squat." Nor do I see this as likely to change, since by my nature I don't seek jobs where the principal reward is pecuniary.

The truth is that I know what my future will bring. In the next 40 or 50 years, assuming I live that long, I'll probably enjoy moderate success as a writer. I'll write and publish a few books, possibly tour a little bit to promote them, and then I'll die. Within a few years, no one aside from family members and a few close friends will remember me.

I not only know that, I'm content with it. At the moment, the chief joys in my life are my wife, Natasha, and our two daughters, Evangeline and Rachel. They are more important to me than any career ever could, and the time I spend with them is more exciting than any news story, no matter how hard-hitting or exclusive it is.

Evangeline is almost 4, and the evenings I spend with her are the highlights of my work week. They're a nonstop whirlwind of playing hide-and-seek, holding ticklefests and all-around commotion before we settle down for a bowl of ice cream, stories and bedtime.

On weekends, whatever we can do together, we do. She has helped me to do everything from baking cookies, to turning compost and opening presents for Christmas.

Rachel is just shy of her 10-month mark. She lightens the load on my shoulders as soon as I come in the front door and she greets me with her wide, grinning toothlessness. One of the great joys of being a father is to watch her grow, as she slowly unfolds her language skills and takes her first, tottering steps into the world

History tells us that Alexander the Great built one of the greatest empires the world has ever known. Ruling the ancient world without descending into the barbarism other emperors were known for, he united the city-states of Greece before conquering Turkey and Phoenicia, subduing Egypt and building an empire that reached as far east as India.

That's impressive, but what we often forget is that when Alexander the Great died among the ziggurats of Babylon, it was after a night of carousing. He had conquered the entire world, and found it to be a desolate and empty thing because there were no challenges left. He died in despair.

In many ways, he's a great prototype for today's professional. Many men, including my own father, lament that they spent too much time at the office and missed the best years of their lives with their children. I hope one day to quip that I spent all my time with my family and missed the best days of my career.

That would be a good life.

New Coke as a Life Moment

About eight years ago, I was talking to my eighth-grade English students at Cradle of Life Christian School about advertising as an example of using language as a means of persuading people to adopt a course of action. Being the hip, young teacher that I was, I trotted out the example of how Pepsi had taken advantage of the chaos created by the New Coke.

Blank stares.

"You know, the new Coke."

No response.

"Oh, come on -- it wasn't that long ago. I was a sophomore in high school, which meant ..." (quick arithmetic as I realize my students all were in training pants or diapers at the time of the New Coke.) "Okay, have any of you ever wondered why it's called Coca-Cola Classic?"

When it comes to funny, go for what's old

Perhaps I'm just getting sour in my old age, but I'm finding that the funny pages just aren't that funny any more.

Great strips I've read in my life include "Bloom County," with its zany and outlandish stories that skewed current events; "Calvin & Hobbes," which Bill Watterson used to elevate comic strips to an art form; and "The Far Side," with its surreal and often Kafkaesque one-panel scenarios,

The comics section of the Star Ledger is a shadow of what it used to be, and there aren't many strips I enjoy anymore. "Doonesbury" saw better art after Trudeau's 18-month hiatus, but the writing never recovered. Other strips languish under limited-joke syndrome, like Garfield's fixation on lasagna, Mondays and what a loser Jon is.

I'd say that the classic "Peanuts" should have made way for new talent when Charles Schulz died last year, but it is a cultural icon and how many children first learn to read. And besides, what's going to replace it?

"Boondocks" is more about conveying deserved anger than it is about humor, and "Mutts," while reminiscent in some ways of older comics like "Krazy Kat," just ain't funny.

The same is true of Saturday morning cartoons. If you want something side-splittingly funny, go old school

The classic "Merry Melodies" and "Looney Tunes" from Termite Terrace have aged well. The slapstick antics of Daffy and Bugs are just as funny now as they were 40 years ago. Attempts to create new Bugs cartoons in the 1980s failed miserably in my mind; you just can't duplicate Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Friz Freleng. Classic Warner Bros. cartoons are among the best ever made. My wife and I even bought two of the tapes for our daughter to watch.

If you want quality stuff, get what was produced sixty years ago and still has name recognition.

Now get off my lawn.

Getting older without getting any wiser

As I write this, I am only a few hours away from the big Three-Oh.

Thirty really isn't that old. I don't feel much older than I did when I was turning 29. And it only seems like a few weeks ago that I was a 10-year-old delivering my "Grit" paper route, telling all my customers that it was my birthday and wondering why I was getting such big tips.

Thirty years old. That's nearly half a human lifetime. That's how old Jesus Christ was when he began his ministry. It's nearly as old as Alexander the Great was when he died. And it's older than Peter Parker is in the "Spider-man" comic books. (But not as old as Batman. Bruce Wayne still has a few years on me, I think.)

And as my brother recently pointed out, if I lived in the world of "Logan's Run," this would be the last day of my life, since the sandmen make sure no one lives past 30. Not even people who thought "Logan's Run" was a tedious movie with effects that make "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" look good.

I don't know why, but something about round numbers makes us take notice. So I sit here, while the dials on my chronometer roll inexorably over to Three-Oh and I slide steadily toward ossification and old age, and I find myself wondering what I would do differently if I could live my life over.

First, I would have sold out sooner. I graduated from college in 1992, just at the start of the longest economic growth period in American history. I spent the next two years living below the poverty line in Haiti, where I rarely had electricity and had hot water even less frequently.

Even after I returned to the United States, I continued to work for a better world, first as a teacher and then as a community journalist. Eight years out of school, I still earn less than $30,000 a year, while friends of mine who graduated five years later are making twice that, with better benefits packages, at businesses like Lockheed Martin Co.

I should have gone for the money and saved idealism and self-fulfillment for my retirement years, like everyone else.

Secondly, I would have spent more time watching TV and surfing the Internet. Nothing is worse than listening to a group of other people talking about the previous night's episode of "Seinfeld" or "Survivor," and not having a clue what they're talking about -- especially when you still think "Gilligan's Island" is the funniest thing on TV.

In the ocean of pop culture, I'm a desert island. I don't understand a thing people talk about anymore.

The computer thing is especially galling. Companies like Yahoo! and Netscape, whose services and programs I use regularly, were founded by people my age who now are multimillionaires (see my earlier comment about selling out). I have only a beginning knowledge of HTML, and absolutely no grasp of JavaScript, although I do think that Usenet is pretty neat.

And what really gets my goat is that only three people who read that last line even remember what Usenet was.

Thirdly, I would have said "I told you so" more often, especially back in college when I frequently expressed the minority viewpoint. What's the point in being vindicated if you can't rub the other person's nose in it?

And lastly, I wish I hadn't eaten that second cheeseburger for lunch today. I could have saved the money to buy myself a Coke later in the afternoon.

If I had done these things, perhaps turning 30 wouldn't be so ominous. If I were rich, it wouldn't matter if saying "I told you so" drove away everyone I stumped at TV trivia. Rich people always have parasites and sycophants hanging about them.

And besides, as a multimillionaire I could have afforded not only the cheeseburger and Coke, but an order of fries as well.

Something to shoot for by the time I turn 40.

The perils and perpetual appeal of ponytails

I've always felt that if a superhero is allowed to do something, I should be allowed to do it too.

Now that I'm 29 years old, some people think I should have put comic books behind me, But who wouldn't get swept up into Mark Waid's coming-of-age story "The Return of Barry Allen," in which Wally West, the Flash, grows out of the shadow of his predecessor? Who could ever forget the psychological problems of Alan Moore's heroes in "Watchmen?" And who wouldn't want a ponytail like Superman had in the mid-1990s?

Back in the 1950s, Superman fought for Truth, Justice and the American Way, all with capital letters and George Reeves' potbelly, and that meant he had his hair cut short like a good Marine. But after Superman died in 1992, the man from Krypton came back in 1993 with long hair. As a means of concealing his secret identity from his arch-enemies, he wore it as a ponytail as Clark Kent.

Ponytails make a statement about their wearers. On a large hairy man who rides a motorcycle and has the word "Ma" tattooed on his bicep, a ponytail says, "Call me a sissy and I'll break every bone in your body."

A ponytail on the head of a business executive, on the other hand, says, "Don't even think of calling me a sissy or I'll get my dad to fire you. He's chairman of the board, you know."

In the case of Clark Kent, the ponytail clearly said, "OK, so I have rippling muscles, disappear whenever there's a crisis and just before Superman appears; and maybe I do survive the most incredible accidents, but I'm obviously just a investigative journalist."

Who wouldn't want a ponytail like that? Heck, forget the ponytail. Just give me super hearing like Superman's, and I'll start getting better stories than Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's Pulitizer-winning coverage of Watergate.

It can be hard to grow a decent ponytail, even without the benefit of Superman's invulnerable hair. (I have an old issue of Action Comics in which Lois breaks a pair of scissors on Clark's mop.) For the past two years, I've been engaged in an on-again/off-again struggle for a tail that gets regularly thwarted just before the moment of triumph.

For me, I have to admit that the appeal in ponytails lies in their "hippiness" and the noncomformist approach they help to project. I don't like to be like everyone else, and one of the ways I can express that is through my hair length.

Ponytails on men have become somewhat acceptable socially since the 60s, but they still convey more than a hint of that nonconformist image. So I've long wanted to grow a ponytail, perhaps for the same reason I've grown a beard.

Back in 1998, I was off to a good start. After nearly eight months without a trip to the barber's, it was getting long enough that even the mayor of Montgomery Township remarked that it was starting to become a decent ponytail.

As luck would have it, that was in May, and Natasha and I had set our wedding date for June 13. If my hair had been another inch or two longer, I could have tied it all back and kept it. But it wasn't, and the progress of eight months was undone by a single trip to the barber's.

The committeewomen, who had hated the tail from day one, cheered. Natasha was indifferent. I was crushed, but I resolved to try again.

Slowly my hair got longer, and inch by painstaking inch, it reached first my collar and then beyond. In front, my hair grew longer and longer, making it hard for me to see when it fell down my face. There was no doubt in my mind. I was going to make it.

Less than a month before my hair would have been long enough to tie the front hairs back into a tail, the managing editor position for the Hillsborough Beacon and The Manville News opened. It meant a raise, more control over a newspaper than I had as a mere reporter, a chauffeured limo and a personal trainer, all at company expense.

Well, I made up the bit about the limo and trainer, but this is a position of some local importance. I tied my hair back one final time, and made the fateful trip to the barber one cold morning.
Snip snip.

That was six months ago, but I've given up. My hair was getting long again, so this week I made a trip down to the Hillsborough Barber Shop, paid my $14 and got it whacked off again.

I just wish I'd get X-ray vision to compensate.

senior moments

You have not lived until you have tried to keep step with a senior citizen on the dance floor, and failed.

Now it's not that I expected to be able to hold my own at ballroom dancing, or at any of those other formal-type dances that have been beyond my ken as long as I can remember. But I would have liked to think that as a 28-year-old, I would be able to hold my own on "The Electric Slide."

No such luck. My wife and I attended a dinner this Sunday to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Hydesborough Senior Citizens, and I was thoroughly put to shame. Disgraced. And not just on "The Electric Slide," but on "YMCA" as well. I held out fairly well on "The Twister," but by that time the damage was done.

I'm not sure what I expected when Lou Possemato, president of Hydesborough Senior Citizens Chapter A, invited me to attend the anniversary dinner. I don't recall ever seeing either of my grandmothers dance, but if I had, I'm sure it would have been done to the music of Bing Crosby or someone else truly sleep-inspiring at 16 RPM.

My maternal grandmother did enjoy listening to music. One of her favorite songs was "Why can't the English learn to speak?", the song Henry Higgins performs in "My Fair Lady." When my grandfather was alive, she would play that song on their gramophone so loudly that Queen Elizabeth II once sent her a letter asking her to turn it down or risk an international incident.

I credit my grandmother with my love of the English language and my decision to enter first teaching and now journalism. As a writer, I get to break with impunity all those rules she guarded so zealously, on the grounds that I'm doing it "for effect."

The bulk of my remembered activities with my grandmothers involves stories. A question about what there was for breakfast usually elicited fond memories of Uncle Webster, who in 1927 bought a boat for $50 -- which in those days was quite a lot of money, you know -- and took it south from Rhode Island to Florida with his one-armed nephew Cyrus, my second cousin, three times removed, as his only crew.

I usually enjoyed listening to those stories, and even when I didn't, I was too polite to leave. By the time she finished, four hours would have passed, and it would be lunchtime.

I rarely ever actually got to eat breakfast when we visited Grandma Ergood.

Somehow I never expected a senior event would be so, well, active. When I decided to attend the dinner, I think I expected to have a good meal since, in my experience, senior citizens nearly always eat well. After eating, I would be subjected to some boring speeches and more stories of Uncle Webster and Cousin Cyrus.

After that, there would be some rousing games of Scrabble or Bingo, and of course the regularly scheduled organ concerts. ("Oh, my heart"; "Oh, my liver"; "Oh, my kidneys" ...) Any dancing would be something suitably old-fashioned, like a waltz.

The last time I tried to waltz, I was an exchange student in New Zealand attending a dance run by a seniors group in Rotorua. Three different girls tried to show me to do it. I was in heaven with that much female attention, but I remained a miserable failure at the waltz.

Worst of all, the music was ballroom arrangements of songs like "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?" with extra verses thrown in for the seniors in attendance. Every time I started to get the hang of the steps, the little old lady at the piano would croon, "How much is that kidney in the window?" and I would lose my ability to concentrate.

In all, I was quite surprised with the dinner Sunday afternoon. The food was good, as expected, but most of the speeches were short, and Possemato lightened his comments with amusing stories that had nothing to do with Uncle Webster's rock band or Cousin Cyrus' wooden prosthetic arm eaten by termites after they reached Florida.

There was some traditional dancing, as expected, but after most of the honored political guests had left, about 30 seniors ran up front to do "The Macarena." I joined them on "The Electric Slide," and I'm embarrassed to say that they know the steps much better than I do.

I'm not sure I really was at a seniors dinner on Sunday. They seemed too young. Either everyone there was dressed up in elaborate costumes to make them look older than they were, or getting old is going to be a lot more fun than I thought.