How Not To Act Old

I’m thinking about reviving my New Year’s Eve party this year (yes, of course, you’re totally invited) but decided my former Snell Roundhand on glitter-embedded parchment invitations were too elaborate, too optimistic, and too, just, you know — too fucking old.

What was needed, this holiday season, was something edgier, something earthier, something that acknowledged how grim things had become, how cynical we felt about the possibility of them getting any better, and yet at the same time something that shed a little light, in all senses of the word, on our sorry condition.

I considered one of my favorite motifs, the dead Santa…..

….but decided that was too grim, even for me. Hey, isn’t that Sarah Palin?

And then, in one of those web segues that happens you’re not sure how, probably while Google is nibbling a little piece of your brain, I hit upon it: ZOMBIES!

I found my perfect poster girl….

….and I sat there loving her, loving it, even loving the whole idea of a New Year’s party and life in general for, oh, about eight and a half seconds, which might be a record for me.

Then I thought: Huh. Zombies. Okay, I love zombies. A lot of the world loves zombies right now. Witness the Jane Austen zombie books and the zombie invaders in the Twilight saga. And zombies certainly fit the zeitgeist of everybody feeling all stunned and frozen and helpless in the face of no money and no jobs and more war and, God, that whole Tiger Woods thing.

But the more relevant concern was, How would my friends feel about zombies? My (mostly) middle-aged, middle-class, suburban friends? Would they think a zombie-themed party was sick, juvenile, stupid, scary, boring, not to mention baffling? Would they think that image was supposed to be me (which of course it is) and question my sanity or, even more worrisome, my taste?

Yes, I decided, they would. I mean, they would hate zombies. As they hate vampires. And werewolves. I hated all those things myself, until this morning, when I found that picture and realized it was perfect for New Year’s Eve 2009 and the whole way I feel right now.

I suddenly understood, really got, why so many young people love zombies. And I also understood why so many old people don’t. I mean, turning green, having your legs sewn on backwards, becoming the undead just all starts to feel a little too possible as you get older. A little too imminent. Not the kind of thing you want to look forward to on New Year’s Eve.

Yet it is the duty of this blog to tell you How Not To Act Old, and transcending your fear of zombies is one way. Party on.