Avoiding Forty

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February 11, 2011 by Rebekah Newman

When I was in college, an English professor told me he didn’t think anyone under the age of 40 had anything worth saying. I was 20 at the time and since he had just, before making that comment, finished reading something I wrote, I was convinced he was an idiot.  Now, as I look over my shoulder to make sure no one is listening, I’ll tell you something I don’t admit often. Shhhh! I don’t want this to get around. Are you ready? I turned 40 last year. As I type the words, my shoulders slump and I sigh heavily.

Forty may be the new thirty, but I do not want to be the new thirty. I want to be the old 30, the one finally getting a handle on how to apply make-up and who still has time to figure out where I want to be in 10 years. The one who spends ample free time planning my next travel destination and who has never once considered skipping the vacation to buy Botox instead.

I regularly deny my age, even to those who have known me for 20 years and can count. I don’t really care if anyone knows my age, I just hate hearing the words spoken out loud, whether they are spoken by myself or by another 40-something who has naively embraced the milestone and doesn’t understand why we aren’t all sinking with the ship. They are the people who say things like “You are over forty, so you will remember…”

Precautionary measures must be taken to ward off these people and I do so by creating an air of reasonable doubt about my age. Doing this is not always easy. I try to work expressions into the conversation like “I don’t know that song, it was probably a little before my time,” even though I’ve been able to recite all of the lyrics and do most of the dance moves since fourth grade. Or, “I was too young to see movies back then, what was it about?” even though my mother still has a framed picture of me in my bedroom with the movie poster hanging on the wall in the background.

I always laugh a little when I say these things, but I never offer the truth. It’s my own little inside joke. If I am called on it by one of my mathematically unwavering friends, I deny it the way you deny to your six year old that you had any hand in the presents under the tree. Sometimes I am so good at pretending, I begin to wonder if that whole 40th birthday cake I have pictures of, was just a bad dream.

The worst thing about being forty is you have been told for years by everyone older than you, and not just the idiotic professors, that with age, comes knowledge. I’m here to blow the lid on that one and tell you it’s a big bunch of hooey.  I don’t seem to know any more now than I did ten years ago. I still don’t know where I want to be. I can’t get a handle on all the lotions that go under the make-up and I’m too busy with kids to plan a trip that isn’t listed in my Travelzoo newsletter. Maybe there is still time to figure it all out though. If fifty is the new forty, God willing, I have ten more years to come up with insightful and inspiring wisdoms that my professor would be willing to read. That’s probably plenty of time.