I thought of this the other day when I was riding my bicycle to some place that is about 5km away to meet some friends at a beach restaurant for some drinks and maybe some food. There was a guy there that I hadn't met yet and the entire time I was around him he seemed like he was really trying too hard to appear a lot younger than he really is. He had his hat cocked to the side like he is a wannabe gangster or something and he kept using slang that I only hear on YouTube videos and then later have to look it up. This guy is around my age as well and this is not the way that a normal person in their 40's behaves.
The thing is, it doesn't make him look cool and youthful like I am sure he is going for, it makes him seem desperate and pathetic, as well as unable to accept the fact that he is a man in his 40's.... There is only so much you can do to fight age and I find it rather sad when people try to do it.
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I don't wear a bicycle helmet when I am riding because let's be honest here. If i get hit by a car on the road in Vietnam, is that 99 cent plastic piece of crap going to make any difference? I don't think so but might end up regretting that decision later in life. It is also a million degrees here every day so I would prefer to not be sweating even more than I already am. Well as I was leaving, this 45 year old trying to be a 19 year old said to me "where is your lid, yo?" That is teenager talk for "why aren't you wearing a helmet." For one thing "fuck off" and another thing "nobody your age talks like that, stop it."
When I got home I recalled when I actually was a lot younger and there were a few people that I interacted with, mostly because of my job, that were desperately trying to be part of the group of young people. This was always met with a bit of disdain and polite laughter when they were not around but the fact remains that when you are older you simply are not part of the younger people's peers and unless you are famous like Leonardo DiCaprio, there is nothing you can do to change that.
Let's start with a job I had when I was 19 at a country club as a waiter. We mostly did nothing at this job because the customers of the country club didn't actually want to eat at our restaurant because it wasn't good. They were required as part of their membership to spend a certain amount of money at the restaurants each month and would be charged for it even if they didn't use it so we were busy for like 3 days a month at the end.
During these 3 days there is a lot of prep that otherwise we wouldn't bother with because we know that almost no one is going to come in. Some nights literally no one would come in. But while prepping for this event we had to turn up early and the manager, who was in his late 30's or early 40's wanted to lighten the mood and make it fun by putting on some loud music for us while we were setting up the dining area. I still remember that he put on some early 80's Aerosmith and came out of the office where the sound system is bumping his head up and down jamming to the music when "I'm back in the Saddle again" came on. I don't know if this guy expected us to stand up on the chairs and applaud his entrance but all of us were secretly making fun of him. Well, not so secretly actually, when we would go back to the break room smoking area we were all containing chuckles that finally got unleashed.
I remember the guy's name even though it was a very long time ago. This is remarkable because I don't even remember the name of all the people that I regularly hung out with that were my own age at that time. He left such an imprint on me because it was just such a cringe thing to do to try to be one of the teens when you are double our age. He would constantly try to hang out with us saying things like "so where is everyone hanging out tonight after work?" I don't want to be mean to people that are older than me but this guy is nuts if he thinks that teenagers are interested in hanging out with someone that is nearly the age of their parents. We all made up lies and then met up with one another anyway and unfortunately for manager Chris (the 40 year old guy), he was the butt of a bunch of jokes on those occasions.
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Maybe it is just because I am comfortable in my own skin and have also accepted the fact that I am in my 40's but I really don't understand when people attempt to be a lot younger than they are. It almost always doesn't work unless you are famous. I also know, as someone who has managed groups of people, sometimes those who were significantly younger than I am, that it is important to maintain a professional distance between you and those who are beneath you in the hierarchy of management. You can't and shouldn't be friends with the people that you may have to order around at the job, it just doesn't work. None of us respected Chris and looking back I kind of feel bad for the guy. Even though he might not have appreciated it at the time, older me wants to go back and take control of younger me's body and have a little conversation with Manager Chris and tell him quite bluntly, that this tactic of his isn't going to work.
Next up is a general manager at a very popular bar that I landed what became the best job of my life. We were all in our early 20's and the bartenders, which ended up being my job eventually, were all 21-27 years old. You have to be 21 to prepare alcoholic beverages in the state that I lived in at the time. The general manager was named Derek and he was a lot like Manager Chris in that he was in his mid 40's and was surrounded, daily, by attractive boys and girls in their 20's. Derek and the assistant manager whose name I do not recall were both guilty of trying to be "one of us" and again, we mostly just made fun of them when they weren't around. I don't think that it is ok to make fun of people, but when you continually try to relate to people that are 20 years or more younger than you are and be pals with them, it simply isn't going to work.
If Derek and the other guy had just been cordial and friendly, we would have had a lot more respect for him but for some reason he seemed to think that because we had to hang out together at the club every night, that we were somehow friends. Sorry Derek, we were not friends. You were my boss!
I remember multiple times where his desperation to become pals with the younger crowd kind of reached a crazy level, and also a very illegal one, when he would take us into the stock room to "do inventory" and there would be lines of cocaine on top of some jumbo-sized containers of drink mix in the back. I am not ashamed to admit that I did do cocaine back in those days but I wasn't expecting it to be given to me by my employer while I was on the clock.
Derek saw this as an inroad to be part of our social circle and perhaps, in his mind, a way to maybe be able to hook up with the female bartenders and waitresses that worked there. This was not the case at all though. If anything it made us perform worse at work because we now knew, whether actively or subconsciously, that we could get away with anything that we wanted to at work when your boss is giving out class-A narcotics in the back room.
I recall seeing Derek at parties every now and then and every now and then he would find a THOT (that hoe over there) that really wanted cocaine and knew that Derek would always have some. it was really late at night and she was done with Derek because he was out of blow and now she was pretending to be asleep so he would go away. Derek, thinking that he was going to get laid or something, sat on the sofa next to her and also pretended to be asleep despite the fact that the rest of this living room was filled with people that were still drinking, talking, and hanging out. Although I can't say for sure I would bet the farm that Derek probably eventually gave up and went home alone.
The really pathetic thing about both of these situations is that Manager Chris as well as Derek were good-looking, talented, intelligent, and fun people.... they were just aiming for something that was beyond their reach and were probably both rather dismissive of good-looking, talented, intelligent, and fun people that were around their own age.
The last I heard of Derek was at least 10 years ago and he was single, rather lonely, and living not far from where I first met him. I just wonder how much better life could have been for both him and Chris if they had just stopped trying to be 20 years younger than they are.
Even though I now live somewhere where the men routinely end up with girlfriends that are decades younger than they are, I have no illusion about what is the driving factor behind this: Money. In a later writeup, because this one is already too long, I will get into that phenomenon and why I think it is completely different than the situations above that I have just described.
So I suppose the point here is that if you are 40, just be the best 40-year old that you can be. Stop trying to be a 20 year old in a 40 year old's body. This has never worked for anyone.