Lehe: Aging brings the good and the bad

I was watching ‘Knocked Up’ on Friday, and my friend Andromedon got upset when he found out… I was watching ‘Knocked Up’ on Friday, and my friend Andromedon got upset when he found out the characters were only 23.

‘That’s only a year older than us!’ he said. ‘We’re old.’

I am pretty old, for college. And I’m staying a fifth year to do a bachelor’s of philosophy about congestion pricing. By September, I’ll have a whole five years on some of my classmates.

I can fight it, of course. If I shave, I look about 20, like in my Pitt News photo. I have an Alabama license; so I could hang out with sophomores and say, ‘Check out my fake. It says I’m from Alabama and like 23!’

However, getting older hasn’t been so bad. Pros:

1. You don’t feel lame and bored as often.

When I was younger, if I stayed in for a weekend, I would fall into a morose conviction that my existence was bland and sterile. Life was passing me by. If I watched a movie with characters my age doing something exciting, I felt threatened, like I was missing out. It doesn’t help that most advertising is designed to make you feel this way.

Nowadays, what I view as my present life extends further into the past and future. If things don’t pan out one weekend, it’s fine. I take nourishment from how two weeks back my friends visited from New Orleans and I played in a Kelly Clarkson cover band. And this summer, I’m going to Colombia. With this peace of mind, I can legitimately relax on a Friday night once in a while like I never could before, just listening to a podcast or reading a book.

2. You have a higher pain tolerance.

One day when I was a kid, my dad cut his arm with the hedge trimmer and bled all over the place. Then he bandaged up, applied some Neosporin and inside of five minutes he was watching ‘Shawshank Redemption’ and eating a Popsicle happy as could be. I thought my dad was some sort of Zen master, impervious to suffering.

Now, I understand: as you age, pain gets less painful. Or, it hurts the same, but it’s just not as distressing. You don’t care. I dealt with a slipped disk last week — a very old-people ailment — and I just thought, ‘Hell, at least it’s not appendicitis again.’ Even if I got appendicitis today, I would take comfort in the idea that, useless and dangerous as it is, the appendix has the courtesy to make a clean exit when the bell tolls.

3. You know what you’re bad at.

Although for some reason the education system tells you otherwise, you’re mediocre or awful at 80 percent of the activities that can be undertaken. Knowing what you’re bad at is at least as important as knowing what you’re good at. You save time and frustration. It’s also just comforting to prune the possibility tree of what you can reasonably accomplish, so you don’t fret so much over what to do.

This knowledge comes hard, though. Only after years of failure and trying your best do you realize what you’re not cut out for. Every day, you can meet the morning sun boldly asking, ‘What will I screw up today?’ And, with perspective, the answer can make you laugh.

4. You can appreciate pop music.

When I was 10, we had this social studies project where we played our favorite song for the class. I played ‘MMMBop’ by Hanson. Then I became a teenager and listened to punk, indie and underground rap.

Now, although I’m no Fonzie, I’m comfortable at my current level of cool. So, I can splurge a little of my accumulated cool and learn all the words to a Shakira song without feeling guilty. After all, I’m going to Colombia … where Shakira is from!

Getting older isn’t all fun and games, though. Cons:

1. You and your friends aren’t as funny.

When people age, they develop a ubiquitous unease about tasks left undone and decisions left unmade. Consequently, everyone’s sense of humor deteriorates. You’ll find yourself forcing laughs around folks your own age — like you once did for your grandparents — and wondering if the yuks at your own jokes didn’t require some effort. Hang out with teenage boys — who don’t usually have to do anything stressful or make hard choices — if you want to hear a joke that’s not formulaic or passive-aggressive or depressing, one that will make your stomach ache and your eyes tear up from laughter.

2. Your disks slip out of your spine.

Maybe that’s just me.

3. You have to spend more and more time on self-administration.

Somehow, everything is much more complicated than I ever imagined when I was younger.

A growing share of my week slips by filling out taxes, finding roommates, getting insurance to pay for an MRI, updating my address, checking my credit, navigating phone menus, finding lost forms and a dungeon-full of other tiny tasks that crowd my to-do lists and afternoons.

In the end, it’s hard to say if the pros outweigh the cons. But it’s irrelevant, because like it or not, no matter what I do or believe, I’m getting older. And, I’m going to Colombia.

E-mail Lewis at lewis500@gmail.com.

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