I hate to admit it…it’s like crossing a threshold, becoming a grown up when you never expected to grow up. It’s like having to admit that you don’t bend in all the ways you used to bend….isn’t it?

I’m turning 40 ten weeks from today.

There. I said it.

I can’t believe I’M turning 40!! I don’t feel 40. I don’t look 40. Is 40 really the new 30?

What happens next? I think I have arthritis…but only in my right index finger. Is that the beginning of the end? Will my knees go next? Hip replacement? Oh God…do your teeth start falling out about now????

I think the buzz/hype around youth is two-fold.

First, I think this in large part a product of the entertainment media. If you step away from the light of entertainment (including most professional sports) world, the ‘real life’ interactions between 20somethings and older people mostly favor the older people. The older people are usually the ones with more power, money, and stability through social bonds to family, colleagues, and social organizations. In other words, in day-to-day life, it’s the older people who usually have what the younger people want [even though they might not admit it - I mean stability, ugh, that sounds so boring!].

I am in tech, and rode the Internet wave as a fresh college grad in the mid 90s. The late 90s were so interesting with the dotcom era because for a while this dynamic was tantalizingly flipped around with recent college graduates (or dropouts) or otherwise generally not qualified people left and right founding the next great thing company. Of course, why the VCs went for this so often I’ve no idea, but they were acting like the entertainment industry, motivated more out of fear of being left behind than what was necessary to build stability.

Peter Wells takes little comfort from Steve Biddulph’s book.

Turning 40 is like supporting the Manly Sea Eagles: you remember the good times, but they are becoming a distant memory. While 30-something, it is easy to be a child at heart. Change the odd nappy, cook a dinner, iron some shirts, no need to take anything too seriously.

Now I’m offended when people suggest I’m too old for soccer (just because I recently snapped my cruciate ligament in a freak incident. No one tells Andrew Johns he’s too old for football).

I’ve begun to notice men on TV are dumb, weak and emotionally impudent. Apart from my Master and Commander DVD, I’ve given up watching.

Woke up this morning and looked all over the house for “The Instruction Manual.” Damn. Would have really thought “They” would have delivered it by today (at a minimum!).

Tried to stifle the urge to peruse eBay looking for small-ish 1970’s Ferrari/Maserati/Lamboghini coupe. Not red – too damn stereotypical. Wasn’t successful, but thankfully only bid insufficient amounts.

Realization that I could have fathered any of the women in my wife’s Victoria Secret catalogue, or any of the men in this weekend’s NBA Freshman All Star game.

This weekend’s SPAM has been ferocious. Three an hour – and all focused on my whatnot. At least the euphemisms are worth reading, “Willy, Potato Man, One-eyed Snake, Love Muscle, your Member, Erect-oid, Ejaculator, your Johnson, your Manhood, Schlong, Love Monkey, Spud Stud, etc. Do they know something about turning 40 that I don’t? Should I be getting concerned? Does some marketing guru keep a master list of those males who are turning 40 and then they let loose the torrents of anxiety-raising questions regarding one’s sexual competency. Is this SPAM a portion of the Instruction Manual for which I have been searching diligently?