After yesterday’s missive my friend Judy welcomed me to middle age. I am middle-aged and there’s no getting around it. I am ready. But I want to be a Grup please.
“If being a Grup means being 35, and having a job, and using a messenger bag instead of a briefcase, and staying out too late too often, and owning more pairs of sneakers (eleven) than suits (one), and downloading a Hot Hot Heat song from iTunes because it was on a playlist titled “Saturday Errands,†and generally being uneasy and slightly confused about just what it means to be an adult in these modern times—in short, if it means living your life in fundamentally the same way that you did when you were, say, 22—then, let’s face it, I’m a Grup. The people in the pictures accompanying this story? Grups. In fact, take a minute and look up from the magazine—if you’re in public, you’ll see them everywhere. If you’re in front of a mirror, you might see one there too.”
Yeah, I see one in the mirror. I have also have eleven pairs of sneakers and I do live my life the same way I did when I was 22.
Okay, I have more bills now and a mortgage but I don’t have many other adult responsibilities. And I like it that way. I do have a job, of course, but I had one when I was 22 as well so that’s no big change.
- ipod — check…
- jeans to work — not all the time but often…
- staying out late — sure, what do you have in mind?
- no briefcase — check but no messenger bag … I have a collection of backpacks
- uneasy and slightly confused about just what it means to be an adult in these modern times — you bet … I feel like I always have except now I have middle-aged maladies and a few wrinkles.
Okay. If this is the new middle age, I am ready.
Where’s the party? (Just let me get my wedge pillow and wrist braces if we will be staying overnight).