How Not To Act Old

All right, I’ve got to leave you alone for a couple of days now, and I don’t want to catch you Acting Old while I’m away:

#54: Don’t Call July 4th “Our Nation’s Birthday.” Outmoded holiday nicknames — Turkey Day, St. Paddy’s Day — are lame and old.

#55: Don’t Hang One Of Those Flag Bunting Things On Your Front Porch. Very D.A.R.: colonial, dowdy, old. Though I have to admit I have a perverse fondness for these half-circle flags and have one I bought at a yard sale years ago that I can neither bring myself to hang nor get rid of.

#56: Don’t Plant Your Metal Folding Chair Right At The Curb On The Parade Route. Let the little kids hog the front rows. You stand gracefully in back, and if you get tired, go home and take a nice nap.

#57: No over-themed food. No red-white-and-blue potato salad, no cupcakes with little flags sticking out of them, no jello mold. Although Jello Mold might be so old it’s young again.

#58: Watch those Oooohs and Aaaahs. There seems to be an inverse relationship between the number of times someone has seen Fourth of July fireworks and their audible ooohs and aaahs, with grannies, who ought to be so jaded they barely glance skyward, invariably the most vocal. I was going to say you should therefore contain yourself, but you know what, screw it. If getting old means you’re more comfortable showing your excitement over an everyday wonder, bring on the birthdays. Oooooh!

Let’s face it: teenagers are frightening. They sleep till dark, wallow in filth, spend much of their time steeped in electronic violence and pornography, and the rest of their time getting high and squandering your money. They drive too fast, have irresponsible sex, take insanely dangerous risks, and scariest of all, are perversely adept at making us feel ancient.

If confronted by a teenager, try not to show your fear. Do not talk loudly in an artificially cheerful voice. Do not ask such inane questions as, “How’s school?” and “Where do you want to go to college?” Do not, for the love of God, attempt to “get down” with the teen by attempting to mimic adolescent slang or mannerisms.

Instead, back slowly away taking care to make no sudden noises. Open your wallet, and hand over two hundred thousand dollars to a college, any college, who will take the teen off your hands. With any luck, you’ll get your scary teenager back in four (or maybe five) years repackaged as an adult.

And to the teen readers of HNTAO (yes, incredibly enough, there are some): I’m watching you.

As the years advance, we full-figured gals have a, ahem, weighty challenge ahead of us. How to hoist the girls as high as possible without resorting to a bra the size of Wyoming?

The answer, as with so many things, is money. Any bra that’s going to do its considerable job and still look feminine, attractive, young, is going to set you back at least as much as you just spent on sneakers for your teenager. You’re going to have to go to a fancy lingerie department to buy it, and even be fitted by a trained professional brandishing a tape measure. (BTW, for those of you who don’t know, that’s John Currin’s wonderful painting The Bra Shop above left.)

Let’s just quickly run over the elements your bra can NOT have. No elastic thick and strong enough to support a bungee jumper. No more than two — or in extreme cases, three — hooks in back. No cups so capacious they totally rule out the possibility of cleavage. No quadriboob; no backfat.

At the same time, your bra needs to lift, separate, streamline, steady, and smooth. Impossible? No. Expensive but worth it: absolutely.

Do you remember the first time you saw a naked old person? There you were, all young and smooth-skinned and tight-bodied, thinking that was normal because you looked like everybody on TV. And then there was the shock of how different the old person looked: big gut, droopy boobs, wobbly butt, ewwww.

Except now that you’re the wobbly, droopy old person, it’s all too easy to start thinking you look normal. Everybody’s stomach sticks out like that! All thighs come packed with cellulite, everyone has a fupa.

Except they don’t. I’m not saying your body has to look like a 28-year-old’s; I’m just asking that you be realistic about the changes time has wrought. And please, at the beach this summer, don’t subject me to that gut flopping over a Speedo.

Now that How Not To Act Old has hit the 50-post mark, there’s too much here for any of us to keep in our heads. Especially me.

Therefore, I bring you the Weekend Review, in which I digest (and no, that is not a digestion discussion) the messages of previous posts, for those of you who are too lazy, too addled, too busy, or too forgetful to do it yourself.

Our first topic: Ways we’re not going to stop acting old, no matter what anybody (including a noted authority such as myself) says.

There’s some misconception that the message of HNTAO is that you’ve got to quit doing everything outlined here, no matter how much you like it. That’s not true. Rather, what I’m saying is that you should know that doing these things equals acting old, but you might want or need to do them anyway. My personal list of what I won’t or can’t stop doing:

THINGS I DON’T WANT TO STOP DOING

#28:Listening to Springsteen — I genuinely believe Bruce is a genius. Plus, his hero is Philip Roth, who’s one of my heroes too. Plus, how could I work out without Bruce? You might be able to persuade me to offload my Motown, my reggae, my Donna Summer. But I’m forever strapped around Bruce’s engines.

#42: Reading — Come on, guys, did you really think I was serious about this one? Though as time goes on I find myself, like the rest of America, reading less and writing more.

#37: Throwing Dinner Parties — I received several (okay: one) impassioned pleas on this subject from valued dinner party guests. Don’t worry, I won’t stop. But once this blog starts turning big money, I’m hiring a cook.

#17: Drinking Cosmos — I know better than to order them in public anymore, and bars have started using a too-sweet mix. But in the privacy of my own home, the frozen Cosmo is turning into the drink of the summer: fresh-squeezed lime, a splash of cranberry juice, a little simple syrup, lots of vodka, and ice in a blender. Mmmmm.

#46: Hoping Lauren Conrad Will Go Away — Sorry, LC. Nothing personal. But one of the few good things about being in my 80s will be that I’ll no longer see your face on every cover.

#30: Emailing — I’d rather give up my Saturday night sex date.

#48: Man-Bashing — I love men, I really do. But since women of my generation didn’t get Title IX, this became our sport instead. And I need my workout.

THINGS I CAN’T STOP DOING

#21: Leaving Messages — Too convenient.

#9: Planning — Too enamored of security.

#29: Eternal Dieting — Too enamored of both eating and looking good.

#41: Being Excited About Mondays — I love to work, and unless I’m forced to become a poodle-groomer, I don’t think that’s going to stop any time soon.

#49: Curbing My Cynicism — Definitely too late to become more innocent, plus skepticism and negativity are among my most adorable traits!

First off, it’s Mary-Kate and Ashley. Secondly, you can too tell them apart. Mary-Kate is a little shorter, skinnier, darker-haired and all-over pointier: that’s her on the right in the photo. And if that still isn’t clear, in breaking news Spencer Pratt told UsWeekly that Mary-Kate is “the less cute twin.”

The Olsen twins, for those who spent the past few decades on the planet Xebo, jointly played the baby on Full House and went on to become billionaires by doing something visible only to 11-year-old girls. And while they certainly seem to be everywhere, everywhere does not include your suburban commuter bus. Nor did you see one or both of them in your local pizza parlor (they subsist on air) or trying on shoes in Sports Authority.

Faux-sightings of vaguely-familiar baby celebrities is a common failing of the old. Yes, they all look alike. But that young, sweet, too-thin girl you saw on your local commuter bus was just the waif next door.

When my kids really want to torture me, they say: “It’s all good.” They know I hate that phrase. It is not all good! The war in Iraq is not good! Children starving in Namibia and being abused in New Jersey is not good! My own day hasn’t even been half good!

So does this attitude make me a cynic? Undoubtedly. But it also makes me old.

I think the young like the “it’s all good” thing because they still want to believe that everything happens for the best. That guy that broke their heart? There’s a sweeter one around the corner. Didn’t get the job? Wouldn’t have liked it anyway.

I’d like to believe this too. But cynic that I am, I can’t. Still, it’s all better if you cloak that negative viewpoint.

Sad, isn’t it? I mean, there go half my jokes. And nearly all my fun.

That’s right, it’s time to retire those quips about male refrigerator blindness and brains in penises. But before we declare an absolute moratorium, let me just tell you my favorite man-bashing joke, first relayed to me by the divine Mave Maclean of Hampstead, England:

Q: What do you call the useless bit of flesh attached to a penis?

A: A man.

For those unregenerate man-bashers among you, there are plenty more great jokes out there.

But if you’re determined to act younger, you should know that man-bashing has gone the way of bra-burning and do-it-yourself gynecology, another relic of old-style feminism. Seriously, get some one actually qualified like Dr. Scheinberg vaginal rejuvenation surgeon to help you…

Feminists today love men, appreciate men, even revel in gender differences without needing to feel that men are in any way inferior to women, a stance I wholeheartedly support.

At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Old people certainly don’t have a monopoly on fear. Some common fears — spiders, public speaking, even flying — may even be ones we’ve faced and conquered. But change and novelty, not so much. The fear of newness even has a name: Caicophobia.

Maybe you’re afraid to try a different haircut, since your current style has worked so well for you since 1993. Vacation in Virginia instead of Vermont? Undergo hynosis, or try bungee-jumping? Chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken. Not to mention the big fear inherent in doing something like moving across the country or changing careers, which forces you back into the position of being a rank beginner and so relatively ignorant and powerless, not a comfortable position for those of us who’ve achieved some measure of security and stature in our lives.

But being afraid to embrace the unknown can shorten your lifespan, at least if you’re a rat. One study shows that scaredy-cat rats die sooner than adventuresome ones. You’re safer bungee-jumping, in other words, than you are stressing over what will happen if you take the leap.

If you’re wondering who Lauren Conrad is, you’re worse off than I thought. Or better off: It might be preferable to live in blissful ignorance of Lauren, Heidi, Audrina, Spencer, and Brody (huh? who?) than to suffer the weekly — nay, daily, hourly — torture of wondering why Lauren et al are famous and when they’re just going to go away.

Never, that’s when. And yes, Lauren and her friends are richer than you, they’re treated more nicely, they get way more free goodies and fabulous job offers and they most certainly get lots more sex and love too. Of course it’s not fair, naturally you deserve it more, but hoping the world will see the error of its ways and turn its attention from them to you is just, well, immature.

My recommendation: Start watching The Hills (that’s the show whose dramatic arc follows the real breaking of Lauren’s real-life nail). While you’re at it, catch up on your Gossip Girl, which is The Wire by comparison. It may not be good for your soul, but it is good entertainment.