Everyone else is pretty easy to spot. They’re like most of us who look in the mirror and do not recognize our own faces. This one degree of facial separation is one of nature’s mysterious tricks, and no matter what you do, few can escape it. At the same time, there’s a certain democracy about it. In the middle-aged softening, you can’t really tell who was a beauty in their twenties from someone who was plain; nor can you believe that the bald guy who now looks like a potato was once a hot stud. And vice versa. He can’t believe you ever had long hair and a body someone would want to see in a bikini. In this syndrome, it’s common to go to parties and run into old friends whom you haven’t seen for a while and who don’t recognize you. Happily, you’ll find yourself able to return the favor all too often.
At first, this one-degree-of-separation recognition gives life a slightly surreal edge, but one soon gets used to it. Indeed, it becomes just another middle-aged conundrum to bond over.
Scattered throughout the crowd, however, will be another category of middle-ager altogether. They “haven’t aged at all” and look “exactly the same.” Indeed, due to a diligent health routine and the right cosmetic touches, they may even appear to have aged backward.
Meet the “super middles.” They are like they were before, but better.
Take Carl. Twenty years ago when he was living the reproductive lifestyle, Carl was a mess. He was out of shape, anxiety ridden, and he had the energy of a jack-in-the-box. Now he’s confident and fit, wearing designer Italian. He’s got all his hair, which helps. He drives a fast convertible and looks good doing it.
Most of Carl’s once-successful friends, however, burned out. Like sensible middle-agers, they now spend their afternoons golfing and their mornings going to doctors. Not Carl. He started his own company, which requires him to spend a lot of time with cool people in their thirties.
Yes, Carl is annoying because it is annoying to have conversations about “cool thirtysomething people” whom no one older than fifty actually cares about. But still, you have to admire the guy.
And then there’s Victor. He was an eight-hundred-dollar-an-hour corporate lawyer until he got sectionorced, got fired, hit bottom, and charged back up, realizing his true calling was to help others.
He got his pilot’s license, bought a small plane, and now flies it to disaster areas in need of supplies.
Victor is a good person.
And this, indeed, is the hallmark of the super middles. They are trying to be better people, not just physically, but spiritually, psychologically, and psychically. They are about improvement and a determined happiness. This time, they’re going to get things right.
Like Marilyn’s new friend, Rebecca.
Ten years ago, Rebecca was one of those “I don’t know how she does it” women. Then she hit fifty. Her husband lost his job, they got sectionorced, and then she lost her job and went through a typical MAM period, during which she filled her time drinking and engaging with inappropriate men. One night, when a guy she’d pinned her hopes on told her he was seeing two other women as well, she became enraged and slapped him across the face. He socked her in the shoulder and sent her reeling. There was a police report. Then she was caught outside the school grounds driving over the limit and that was it.
She stopped drinking and started exercising—boxing at first because she was so angry—and slowly her life started to turn around.
She’s now training for a mini triathlon and has started another business helping women make investments. It’s doing so well she recently bought a bigger house.
The biggest change is that she is no longer angry at herself. When she drank too much or ate too much or just in general fucked up, she would berate herself continually, and now she feels so much happier because she doesn’t have to waste time being angry at herself for fucking up. Did I get it?
Yes I nodded. I did.
And because she got it, Rebecca had just found her own MNB, a super middle guy named Brad.
Like Rebecca, he was an extreme exerciser, dedicated to an hour of Qigong a day, along with waterskiing and yoga. And because he was a super middle, he wasn’t afraid to express his feelings for Rebecca—he thought she might be the one—nor was he afraid of commitment.
Indeed, in true super middle style, Brad wanted to move in with her even though they’d only been seeing each other for four months.
He also wanted to introduce her to his family.
Marilyn and I were at Kitty’s one afternoon when Rebecca came roaring in. Brad, being super middle perfect, had chartered a private plane to take Rebecca to a family reunion at their compound in Maine.
We all congratulated her on her extreme good luck. Exclamations of “that’s wonderful” and “what are you going to wear?” echoed around the kitchen.
“But I don’t want to go,” Rebecca said.
She was angry he’d even asked. Thinking he was making some kind of romantic gesture, he’d sprung this outing on her out of the blue, when she already had plans for the weekend. Plans with friends that she didn’t want to cancel. Plans that Brad should have remembered. Why should she cancel plans with her old friends to go hang out with strangers?
But they wouldn’t exactly be strangers we pointed out
. They were Brad’s relatives, the implication being that they might someday be her own.
“They’re still strangers,” she countered.
And around and around it went, with all of the women taking the side of the “relationship” over the fact that Rebecca selfishly, we assumed, didn’t want to go to Maine for the weekend. Because selfishness is not allowed, especially when a super middle man of solvent means is concerned.
And so, Rebecca went to the family reunion and she was miserable but she thought it would pass.