I say this as I lay my head upon my formerly jelly-bracelet covered arm: I am getting older.
Not old. OldER. The fact that I still contend with zits on a regular basis does not negate the reality that a nieghbor's child, whom I am absolutely sure was born about five years ago, just started an internship with GE.
There are certain virtues, however, to being older. You acquire a particular kind of wisdom. You gaze back upon the vast expanse of your life and certain aspects of it are placed in a unique perspective that leads you to discover that you acted, in your youth, like a complete and total loser. For instance, it has occurred to me that:
•The New Kids on the Block were not, perhaps, the musical geniuses I once perceived them to be.
Here were five young men, currently employed at a Wal-Mart near you, who rose to stardom on the following lyric:
“Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!
Oh-oh-oh-oh!
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!
THE RIGHT STUFF!”
This is not to say, however, that the New Kids did not devote themselves to artistic growth throughout their stellar three-year reign on the cover of that sublime journalistic masterpiece, “Bop”. In their most recent album, “Step By Step”, the New Kids participate in admirable consciousness-raising by asking us,
“How could you play me
Like a champ, a tramp, a cramp
Girl you did me worse than a food stamp.”
To the New Kid’s credit, this courageous musical stance has deeply affected the way I conduct my adulthood interpersonal relationships. “One of the things I love about Mary Beth,” my friends are always saying, “is that she never does me worse than a food stamp.”
•Upon further review, poofing my bangs to heights where they required flashing airplane warning lights was not particularly flattering.
Never was this more apparent to me than in college, when I helped DJ an 80’s music event for a campus radio station. Spinning the greatest hits of Richard Marx, however, (both of them) meant I had to dress the part. This entailed entering into major curling iron negotiations with my hair, which, in a fit of self-defense, adamantly forbade me to poof it. “You and I have already discussed this issue,” said my bangs as they stubbornly refused to tease skyward. “We’ve BEEN through this. We agreed this is not a good thing. BACK AWAY FROM THE PICK.”
•In retrospect, it may have been a waste of money to attempt to smell like Debbie Gibson.
Once, long ago, I received for Christmas a tiny spray bottle. Inside this bottle was a neon pink fluid, and floating within this fluid was a plastic flourescent lightning bolt. This fluid was: Debbie Gibson’s “Electric Youth” Perfume.
Miss Gibson, for those of you who are currently $15.00 richer than the person who purchased this for me, was a musical entertainer whose work approached the quality of, but was not quite as exquisite as, that of the New Kids on the Block’s. The Gibson scent “Electric Youth” was inspired by the Gibson song “Electric Youth”, which announced that the teenagers of America were, quote, “Zappin’ it to ya.”
If my rapidly ageing olfactory senses serve me correctly, if both Miss Gibson’s song and scent accurately reflected my generation, we zapped it to ya smelling like inexpensive prostitutes. The overpowering odor of “Electric Youth” could be detected from several miles away and quite possibly contributed to the 80’s greatest bulk of hole-growth in the ozone layer.
•Arraying ourselves in entirely neon may not, styisitically, have been the best way to go.
I am told that the top career route for my generation is geriatrics-- training ourselves to care for the even-older-than-WE-are Baby Boomers. I predict that the big-money field for our children will be optometry, specifically cornea replacement surgery. It will be a necessary part of life for our generation after so many years of exposure to fluorescent clothing.
I myself at one time had a wardrobe that enabled me to impersonate the following:
-Chernobyl resident
-Cyndi Lauper’s hair
-The sun
Our sole source of comfort, my fellow aging breakdancers, is that with growing older comes the ability to buy alcohol. So join me for a margarita and a rerun of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” the episode in which the Duke boys are falsely accused of a crime and several car chases ensue. We may reach a state where we can forget that “Punky Brewster” ever existed!
Otherwise, as Michael Jackson grows more gender and racially confused by the day, simply be thankful that you’re closer to natural death than you ever were before.
building this city at: mb@blondechampagne.com