The Things You Can't Do Anymore (or, How You Know You're Getting Old)

With age, there are things that out of wisdom or diminished ability, we just find ourselves incapable of doing.

I will be 37 this August. I can still climb stairs. I can still stay out pretty late without getting tired. I can work almost 24 hours straight and not feel like I am dying. I still feed myself. Though it doesn’t look like it, I still dress myself.

I can do most of the things that I have always done without a second thought.

Lately, though, I have found myself demonstrating a true sign of aging. No, not the gray hair.

I find that I can no longer do crazy.

I just don’t have it in me. Somewhere in the mix with the marriage, the cars, the houses, the divorce, the kid, the weight, the jobs, the recession and the changes, I have lost my ability to deal with people’s craziness.

As a young buck, I could work with crazy. Boy, I was down for my cause. This is a movement, baby. The man is gonna pay. I got the problems, what caused them and the finger ready to assign blame. Are you aware that history shows…did you know, that back in the day…Let’s go toe to toe and rehash old problems and buy into the myths without ever looking in a mirror…Whatever.

Well, gosh, those young days were fun. Being raised in Chicago, however, I have seen too many folk with little self direction look to leadership for orders to be followed blindly, no matter how futile, no wonder how self-destructive. Crazy. It clouds the logic. Thankfully, the leadership has taught their brethren everything comes at a price. The best way to deal with racism, they teach by their example, is get enough money to live like those you condemn. Complaining is big business. Real solutions kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Guess which horse they’re gonna ride? “Bruh, we never see you anymore? We got a plan…”

I got one, too. Move out your mom’s house. We almost 40. Get a job. You got kids. Stop trying to borrow money from me. You ever think your revolution may be more productive if its representatives didn’t come across like Tom Sawyer going after the Spaniards and the A-rabs? Just a thought. You like that old dude at a 20 something party in a corner doing The Wop. Crazy. You making me tired.

Alas, upon entering the workforce as a sapling, I could do crazy. Just let me wear a tie every day. Sure, I’ll travel here and see the opportunities in this and even though a cynic, the dollar signs blind me to the bull. Of course I am defined by my job, Baby. First thing you want to know and the first thing I want to tell you is what kind of work I do. I won’t mention the office politics, the shadiness, my coworkers scarily developing narcotic tolerance. Let’s keep focusing on the W2, the travel, and the fact that I am going places. Like Slowly Insane. Hear it’s nice there this time of year. Crazy.

Ah, to be young again. I have occasions when I work really hard on the side now so I can do my own thing primarily. I prefer that to the delusion that building somebody else’s dream is making me a better person. Something about that reminds me of slavery. Dude, you’ plantation ain’t mine. In 1862, I guess I’d have kept picking cuz they had guns. What’s my excuse now? When a man 20 years my senior can look at me and tell me the Punjabi who owns the business where he work is a good man, because he has employed three generations of this Black man’s family, all I can think about is slavery. Eventually, you gotta do something for you. When I was young and had energy, I could do the dance. Just don’t have the energy anymore. Easier to do side stuff, pay a bunch of bills months in advance, and work on what God wants me to do. Crazy. You slowly turning me into a bohemian.

When I was a whippersnapper, I had all types of tolerance for crazy. Especially if you were a good looking woman. Baby, you confuse anger and defiance with strength? You blind to the fact that people avoid you because you are just God awful annoying? You content thinking men won’t approach you because you intimidate them? Hey, Love, you spend too much time confusing the best you can do with the best there is, and then looking down on folk who’ve done more with less than you? Of course, your PhD makes up for your lack of class, tact and just plain likability.

I…don’t…care. I can deal. Just keep wearin’ that dress. Boy, you smell good. Just don’t say anything and I will keep dreaming we are in heaven. Open your mouth and I will remind myself all pleasure comes at a price.

No more. That sweet bird of youth has flown the coop. Nowadays, I’m quicker to just stop being bothered than white folks are to leave an X-Clan reunion concert. Just like that. Gosh, why haven’t I called in months? Haven’t the energy for it. Crazy. It racks the nerves, makes you need a nap. Why do I go out with the sister who barely finished high school but has a good heart? Or the island genius who doesn’t comb her hair but can quote X Men #181 to me? It’s either that, or give me a ballad, an expressway and twilight. More or less the same feeling, and it’s cheaper. Crazy. You making me rethink this whole “how you choose somebody” mix. And folk like you ain’t in it.

You know how it is.Some old pastimes just have to be let go. It’s all for the best. You getting too old to be doing those young folks’ things, anyway.