Kyle City Limits
by BRENDA STEWART
At 15, the common consensus between my family, teachers and the kind folks at the First Baptist Church, was that, at the rate I was going, it was unlikely I would ever see adulthood (at least not without those pesky metal bars obscuring my view). That was 1975 and I was 10-feet-tall and bullet-proof and there was no need to tell me anything. I already knew it all, and one thing was for certain: you could never go too fast, laugh too hard or be too tan.
When I wasn’t slathering on the baby oil, frying my skin to a pre-melanoma crisp at the beach, I was a wispy poet manically raging against social injustice and heartless boyfriends and stifling parents. I would rail long into the night, listening to the only people who got me: Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
Two years later I got eye-opening lessons in reality, diversity and poverty as I headed off to college. Suddenly I was just another face in the crowd and I realized that there was a whole big world north of Dallas, and it wasn’t just Canada. And, surprisingly, not everybody used “fixin’ to” as a verb. Thus I learned a lesson in diversity with a healthy dose of humility.
Then came my lesson in economics. I tended bar and telephone solicited, ran a head shop, tutored and graded papers and worked as a mental health worker on a psych ward, and realized that my mother was accurate when she said that money does not grow on trees. It was an odd realization to discover that my parents actually grew wiser the older I got.
In my twenties, I’m sure I figured that I would be in a totally different place at 50 than I am today. Actually, in my early twenties, I was relatively certain that by the time I hit the 50 mile marker I’d surely be in Depends living in some place called Pleasant Village, gumming applesauce. But, for perspective, back then even 30-year-old men were geezers as far as I was concerned. Life’s funny like that.
As I reached my thirties those big age gaps grew smaller and smaller and suddenly it was nothing to have friends and lovers 10 years older or younger than us. In my forties, the gap fell away and I realized that a lot of folks in their fifties and sixties were actually hipper than some of these tightly wound thirty-somethings.
And this fall, as I’ve approached my 50th birthday it’s been amusing to see the varying responses when folks heard that I was heading into the second half of my century. Sometimes there would be a collective gasp (as if they could not believe that I was turning 50 or, maybe it was that they couldn’t believe I was just now turning 50).
Sometimes they emitted that quick whistling sound when someone draws in a sharp breath, and then they cringed, hoping I had enjoyed my youth because it was all a downhill skid from here. Some reassured me that I was still a whippersnapper (I looked it up. It’s a real word but not quite as benign as I had always thought.) and not to worry about a thing, considering the alternative.
I guess, at 50, I would have figured that I’d be more serious, and more finished (in both senses of the word). By now it seems that I should have my life’s work completed and behind me and for the next 50 years I could kick back and read all the books I’ve been stockpiling and maybe pick up the game of Pinochle. Maybe even travel without a backpack strapped to my shoulders. Yeah, right.
I surely don’t feel 10-feet-tall and bullet-proof anymore (sporting my reading glasses at the chiropractor) and over and over I’ve been taught that the cops certainly feel like you can go too fast. And as far as that tan theory goes, the roadmaps around my eyes lead me to a vastly different conclusion these days.
But luckily, through it all, I can honestly say that at 50, my life is good and full and I have never been happier. And one thing that hasn’t changed: I still believe that you can never laugh too hard.
