It's just a number, a high number...

A few days ago I turned 40 years old.  To some this age brings about fear and crisis.  I’m neither scared of the age nor in danger of a mid-life crisis.  Still, I wasn’t looking forward to turning forty. My life was ugly and forty felt like a pair of concrete shoes.  Failures seemed mounting, regrets reared like acid flashbacks, my body ached almost constantly; I thought life would be over at 40.

Then a month away from my fortieth birthday my dreadful life exploded. Details are unnecessary.   The darkest period of my life was behind me and I was as hopeful as when I left for Austin the first time, at seventeen, about a month before my birthday.  I had come full circle.  Life was beautiful again.  Everything felt right and fell into place like a perfect story.  My fortieth year marked this change.  I could hardly hate the age since it brought me to the life I wanted.

I spent the eve of my birthday having drinks at the Touch of Class bar with an artist friend who goes by “The Paintslinger,” (ADZ’s resident artist and Mango Orange Juice contributor,) chatting about this forty number.  We mused about many aspects of our age as I drank four or five giant Shiner drafts and she sipped a bottomless vodka tonic.  Perhaps it was the drinks, but the time continuum faded and we hopped around the past, the now, and the future.

The Paintslinger's work.

Past regrets were confessed.  The Slinger reminded me there is no time to look back.   The moment seemed the place to be. The company was excellent and the Shiner was smooth, to think of any other moment but now would be flat stupidity.

“Cheers.”

Future considerations are just that, considerations.  We considered them.   The future never comes to us as the future, it comes as the now and goes as quickly as the past.

At closing time, the point seemed to be: Now Is the Time.  During the higher readings of my youth I ran across some ideas about being in the moment that I have clung to over the years that always ran counter to most American ideals of work, play and importance.  For some odd reason, I felt I no longer had to pay any token regard to ideals I didn’t create for myself in my forty long years.  Maybe it was the beer…

Midnight in the parking lot of now, The Slinger wished me happy birthday and gave me the gift of a friendly birthday peck on the cheek.  I felt a crazy gratitude for the gift.  I firmly believe her friendly gesture sent me into my forties with luck.  The Slinger being an artist, unconsciously arranges things in a beautiful way.  Her artistry painted the perfect ending to my youth and the perfect beginning to my mature rebirth.

More Slinger.

Ridiculous confidence, rare in my thirties, swelled inside me.  I felt strong, alert and alive.  As I strapped on my helmet I thought, “I am older, but this is the first time I have felt wiser.”

Then i went to start my bike but I couldn’t find the key.  It wasn’t in my pocket or the ignition.  The Slinger had driven away, and my cell phone was in the shop at home.  I thought I forgot the key inside the bar, but the door was locked.  I ripped off my helmet in anger.  The key fell to the ground.  A quick vision of telling my grandmother the glasses she searched for were on her head, followed by the memory of sticking the key between the helmet padding and my head as I buckled up, completely humbled me for a moment.

Yep.  The time is now.  Apparently my brain is fading fast but I still like being forty.  The age is a gift.  At this advanced age, I have the wisdom, enlightenment, and confidence, or at least the rationalization skills, to believe without question what that mouthy kid in me has been trying to tell me for the last twenty years.

“You’re weird.  Quit trying to prove otherwise.”

I wasted a bunch of time trying to make my life appear normal to loved ones who worried about me.  I wasted a bunch of time doing things I was patted on the back for, but hated doing and hated myself for doing it.  That was my thirties, wasted time.  Fuck ‘em.  I’m done with those years. I’m forty damn years old, there’s not much time left…  I’m free.

Fred Roberts

40 Year old Weirdo  and friend of:   http://www.thepaintslinger.com/  Muralist/Artist