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My husband is having a midlife crisis and it’s not fair! I told
him three years ago when I had my (extremely premature) midlife crisis, we should synchronize our watches and get
both of them over at the same time. But would he listen? Of course not. That violates Husband Rule #17: "Only
listen when not listening means you’ll be deprived of either food or sex."
The worst part about my spouse’s midlife crisis is that although he’s thirty-five, he looks twenty-something.
Not in the "I look twenty-something from the back, at night, when it’s really foggy" kind of way, either.
He can easily pass for a college student in the broad daylight, from the front! Perhaps it’s that forty-pound
backpack he carries instead of a brief case. Or maybe it’s the fact that he rides a skateboard to work.
I had always heard that being married to a younger man makes you look hip and cool (assuming hip and cool are still
good things.) But being married to someone who looks way younger than his age is another story altogether.
I’ll give you a perfect example. Last year, we decided to refinance our house to pay for some home improvements.
The mortgage broker came by our house to deliver some paperwork while I was out. The next day when I spoke with
the agent on the phone he said, and I swear this is true, "Your son was very helpful." I went right
over there and slapped him. Okay, I didn’t, but only because the car wouldn’t start.
And about a week ago, when my husband asked a woman, no, make that GIRL, in his acting class (I’ll get to that
part in a minute) how old she thought he was, she said twenty-three! That’s the most frustrating part for me.
You see, he was twenty-three when I met him, and it’s maddening to think that in twelve years he hasn’t aged a
bit and I look at least seven months older than I did then! Okay, would you believe seventeen months and seventeen
percent body fat older?
His midlife crisis started the day he went to a liquor store and they didn’t card him. Or, as he put it, THEY
DIDN’T CARD HIM!
"Calm down, honey," I said softly, trying desperately to hide the joy I was feeling that finally my husband
looked old enough to pass as an adult.
"You don’t understand!," he whimpered. "They always card me!"
"Maybe the clerk forgot to card everybody today," I offered by way of a weak excuse.
"Do you think that might be it?," he asked, desperate to cling onto anything at this point.
I thought it would pass, but it didn’t. The next day, he brought me a list of all the things that prove he’s not
as young as he’d been passing himself of as for the past decade. "#1. It’s been two years since anyone has
asked me whom I have for homeroom. #2. A guy in the grocery store called me "Sir" on April 16 at 2:47
p.m. PST. #3. When I go trick-or-treating, people give me funny looks..."
It’s been downhill ever since. Every day he’d have some new idea for how he could look and feel younger. "Maybe
some baggy pants," he suggested until I told him those were so 1999. "How about a poster of Britney
Spears on the bedroom wall?," he asked. Yeah, right, that’ll happen just as soon as Rob Lowe invites me over
to his house to talk politics. "I could invite a bunch of college kids over and jam!" Assuming today’s
kids are into Simon & Garfunkel and Yanni. I suggested he get his tongue pierced. Only because I knew that
even in the midst of a midlife crisis, my husband would never do anything that involved pain.
Anyway, that’s when he decided to take the acting class at our local university. Now he can talk about doing
homework and how his teacher is so mean to him. Personally, I think he's taking the class so he can learn how
to act younger than his age. Or, at least, the next time the liquor store clerk doesn’t card him, he can act like
he’s gotten away with something. |
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