Many Americans, arriving at middle or later life, change careers. I have known one man who went from being a butcher to becoming a sculptor. And another friend has jumped from being a financial investor to being a portrait painter.
Both of them accomplished the leap with notable success. The former butcher made statues that adorned cemeteries and churches. The second has seen his portraits grace the halls of a famous university.
The words “Trolling the Oceans to Combat Aging” headlined a puff piece in a recent New York Times Style Section that crossed my breakfast table. It featured a new skin product, based on ocean algae, and designed to erase alleged defects of the human face.
Normally, matters of style do not slow down my reading of the daily newspaper. Anything against aging, however, grabs my attention immediately. I stand opposed to all forms of anti-aging.
During my early adolescence, my favorite movie actor was Mickey Rooney. In between the years 1938 and 1944 he made an amazing thirteen Andy Hardy films. These movies thrilled me; each time I could hardly wait for the next one to appear.
By now, the events in Tucson no longer lead the evening news. The attention of most people has turned to other concerns, important things such as football playoffs. The American public’s interest does not pay sustained attention to massacres.
That’s what happened to the other notable mass killings in this still-new century. The killings on the Virginia Tech campus, the shooting spree that killed ten people in the Washington DC area, and the murders at the army base in Texas — all have faded from the public memory. We have little interest in continuing to think about the meaning of these events.
It pains me to hear my age peers described as selfish. When they are called “greedy geezers,” my heart recoils.
This insulting phrase gets used, I am convinced, mostly because it’s cute. It also features alliteration, always an attraction to the phrasemaker.
To my mind, older Americans are no more selfish than people of other ages. Quite possibly less.
In later life I often appeal to the statute of limitations. These days I invoke it the way I never did when young or even middle-aged.
This legal expression usually means that, after a certain lapse of time, some crimes are no longer worth prosecuting. The sixteen-year-old pickpocket will not be arrested for that infraction when he or she is forty-five.
The miners climbing out of the rescue capsule, one by one, and emerging back into the world of light and joy – that’s my favorite image of 2010. This resurrection event last October brought out the best, not only in Chileans, but in the people of the world who helped or just rejoiced with the men and their families.