Who's Afraid of the Old, Grey Wolf?

Carmy's comments on my "Bothersome Thoughts..." post rather got me to thinking.

Hey! Where ya goin'? Get back here!

Specifically, they set me to thinking about aging in general. I may grouse occasionally ("bitching just to hear yourself bitch"), as my Mother often accused me of doing during my teens) about the grey hair in my moustache and beard, but I have no intention of plucking, dying or otherwise altering them. The more I consider the matter, the less afraid I am of aging, not that I've ever been particularly afraid of it.

It's a natural process that happens to all of us. We might as well simply accept it. Yes, I'm getting grey in a spot or two, I have a little less hair than I did a few years ago, and I'm not as fast or agile as I once was. What of it, though? I’m far smarter, I don’t take myself as seriously, and if the condition in which I awaken every morning is anything to go by, I’m still ready to "tear one off" at the drop of a hat(skirt?), which means I’ve no need for Viagra. Suffice to say that I have very few complaints, to date. I never expected to be young forever, or (God forbid) to live forever, after all.

Frankly, I never really expected to make it to thirty (sadly, I don't think a few members of my family and my closest circle of friends expected me to, either), so being a month shy of thirty-nine is almost surprising to me, but in a good way, mind you.

Not long ago, I was looking at a professional portrait of myself, said portrait having been taken at the beginning of my senior year of high school. It's a "casual" shot of me in slacks and a button-down shirt, leaning against a wooden fence before a faux-outdoor background.

The kid in the photo is handsome, to be sure. He's quite a bit better looking than I am. His hair is thick and dark brown, while mine is thinning in the front and usually burned to a reddish-brown by the sun. His eyebrows are thick and dark, while mine are likewise sunburned to blonde in parts, making them appear thinner than they actually are.

He's skinny as a rail. I doubt he'd weigh in at 140, soaking wet. I'd gotten too heavy last year, packing 190 lbs. -- much of it "beer gut" -- around, but now I'm holding at 175, with a 33" waist. This kid's too skinny, though. I know I could snap him in half, like a twig, because he looks like a stiff wind would blow him away. He's pale, too. and too pale. Courtesy of years spent in the Georgia sun, planting and harvesting a good bit of my own food, my color is higher, and I like it that way. That seventeen-year-old kid, on the other hand, wouldn't be caught dead digging the dirt. He thinks it beneath him, metaphorically as well as literally.

The shitty, impish little gleam in his eye conveys this attitude. I'm still quite capable of that look, but now it means something. The kid in the photo, however, just thinks he's smarter than everyone else. He’s far too impressed with his own intellect, for the record. He can drink beer, smoke weed, pop pills, play guitar all day long (when he‘s not necking with his girlfriend), do his homework on the bus-ride to school (if at all), and still make A’s and B’s in most of his classes without even trying.

So he doesn’t try. Except in the classes that interest him, and he can count those on the fingers of one hand. He thinks he’s got everything dicked, but the truth is: He won’t face any challenge unless he’s reasonably certain he can win. Beneath his facade of aloof rebelliousness, he’s a chickenshit. Worse still, he has no substance. He waves his dick at the world, but that’s a smokescreen. The act conceals the fact that he hasn’t any balls. And he hasn’t any real confidence either, as he really can’t DO anything.

Moreover, he hates damn-near everything, but is too young and naïve to know what a toll his blind, unfocused hatred takes on him. It’s really himself he hates, but as he’s not got the guts to admit it, he picks an endless series of “enemies” upon whom to focus his malevolence.

Worst of all, he’s so caught up in being against everything that he’d be hard-pressed to say what he’s for, if asked.

Gentle reader, that boy’s going to learn a few things in the next four or five years; things pertaining to the “Rock/Scissors/Paper” nature of reality, but let’s not tell him, OK? Let’s let him find out for himself.

We won’t tell him that in twenty years some of his closest friends will be members of the various groups he labels his “enemies.” We won’t tell him that he’ll be able to say “I love you” -- and mean it -- without feeling as if he’s being eviscerated. We won’t tell him that he’ll laugh -- and cry -- far more easily than he does now. We won’t tell him that he’ll actually become what he wants to be -- but that the price he has to pay will damn-near kill him, and that he‘ll someday understand that St. Paul was correct when he said that what we want isn‘t always good for us.

We can’t tell him. He isn’t strong enough to handle it.

So I put the picture down and left it where it belongs: on a dusty shelf. The kid’s name was Jeff, for the record. As far as I’m concerned, he died back in 1989. Well, I suppose he didn’t “die,” but he shattered into a million pieces, which, for all practical purposes, is the same thing. Schism after schism, and division after division, he reduced himself to fragments and scattered them about with his last conscious breath.

In time, whether through the agency of some “Über-identity”, or through the chance formation of an accretion disc of sorts, the parts coalesced again, each vying for supremacy or forming alliances with other pieces, as their individual natures demanded. It was a long, slow process but eventually, “Bean” emerged from the heap of wrecked, mangled homo sapiens formerly known as “Jeff.”

I like him a hell of a lot better than his predecessor, grey hairs and all. He’s far more “down to earth,” both figuratively and literally. He’s far stronger, because he knows his weaknesses. He’s more interesting, because he has interests other than himself. He’s good with his brain, good with his hands, and actually relishes the messes he makes when he tries something new “out of the blue.”

In short, he’s “getting better with age,” as the saying goes, so he doesn’t really fear age.
He’ll never have “midlife crisis,” as he hasn’t very much to look back upon fondly. He’s long since gone through the “Lookin’ California and feelin’ Minnesota” phase, and doesn‘t especially miss it. “Jeff” couldn’t see past thirty. For “Bean,” that’s when life really began. To him, “old” and “young” or “old” and “new” are temporal and not qualitative assessments. May his greying beard grow long, and may
"Jeff" rest in peace (and pieces).

Last night, I was looking at a shotgun I had of my father, and he of his. It’s an Eastern Arms .12 gauge side-by-side. Unlike modern weapons, it isn’t blued or parkerized, but rather browned, as was the custom some time ago. This feature alone suggests the age of the gun. The date stamped on the receiver is 1915. As Granddaddy was only seven or eight years old at the time it was made, I assume that it was my great-grandfather’s before is was his.

Having been borne by four generations of Beans now, and having made a circuitous journey from East Tennessee northward, and then back to North Georgia, I suppose that old double-barrel could really tell some tales, were guns capable of that manner of speech. As it stands though, she speaks in her own way, and still does it well for all that she’s ninety-one years old.

She’s an elderly lady, actually, and perhaps missing some the glamour and polish the younger girls have, but she more than makes up for it in presence and authority. In her roughness is a kind of grace and gravity her younger sisters could scarcely hope to equal. She's "been around the block" often enough to know that sometimes it's sexier not to play the "slutmuffin" for all that she's capable of some incredibly "spicy" behavior when fed a load of buckshot.

She’s a tough old broad, and she’s in this race for the long haul, as she‘s a product of an earlier time, and built to last. At ninety-one, she’s neither had a misfire nor even needed a single part (other than her butt plate) replaced, which actually puts her ahead of her far-younger sister, my Remington 870 (a fine weapon in and of itself) in that respect.

Age? Who’s afraid of age? Surely not I. Au contraire, I’m rather looking forward to it, as a matter of fact. I think I’ll get a head start, actually. I believe I’ll throw on a set of denim overalls (nothing underneath, and to hell with the shoes -- she won’t think the less of me for it), take this old dame outside with me, and sit quietly on the bench with her, watching the sky darken and the moon rise, and by-God-sipping my “mountain dew” straight from a mason jar.

We’ll sit there watching the fireflies and listening to everything from bagpipes to bluegrass, just getting older together and enjoying the hell out of every passing minute. We're a lot alike, she and I. other folks have seen better days, but we've seen worse. We're too set in our ways to change, and neither of us wants to, anyway. We won't be "reconstructed," and we don't give a damn. That old shotgun; they don’t make ’em like that anymore, as Greg Kihn once sang. And in what’s left of my vanity, I’d like to think they don’t make ’em like me anymore, either.

I’m as cool as the “hoar-frost” appearing in my beard with that.

Good night and God bless.

© 2006, David Jefferson Bean

Comments

[Carmy]

1989 - was that your year of whatever you want to call that too? Yet another irony. I've often wondered what the teenage me would think of the now 38 me. Thanks for sharing such a beautiful, poetic piece. I'm not going to stop dying my hair though. I'd even dye my eyebrows, I'm that vain!