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As Short One A, Short One B and I traveled down the freeway to grandma’s house for the weekend, I turned on the radio and scanned until I found one playing some great rock and roll. Guns and Roses blared about their sweet child, and suddenly I was twenty years old again. The sky was no longer black as night but deliciously blue and the sun shone on my un-wrinkled body with its warmth.

Suddenly, the world was an open ball of exploration, and I was the female Columbus.

Following G’n'R, and my unabashed singing as the girls in the back stared at me as though I had grown a second head, Van Halen’s tunes blew through the speakers with ease. I was at a hotel then, twenty something, drunk, ready for the concert to begin. Then I was there, singing about ice cream men. Ogling Eddie. Ah, Eddie.

Then the bitch DJ came on, interrupting my back-to-youth time travels with this declaration. “That was a little Van Halen for you. Coming up next, some Pearl Jam, on the best classic rock station around.”

It was as though someone pulled the needle across the album. Everything stopped, including my heart. My foot tapped the brake unexpectedly, and I began to screech.

“Classic Rock? Are you kidding me! What does she mean by classic rock?”

From the backseat, Short One A said, “What’s classy rock?”

“Classic ROCK,” I yelled, “is music that used to be good A LONG TIME AGO!”

I stopped. Remembered.

Oh yea, that was twenty years ago, wasn’t it? “This is NOT classic rock!” I tried to emphasize, but the sizzle began to burn away and reality set in.

Sadly, I suppose it is classic rock.

You see, when I was listening to G’N'R back in the day, Seger and Floyd were considered classic rock.

You know, the guys who used to bring the house down but who, at that point, were older and, well, definitely not so attractive.

That’s where we are now, though, you see? Consider Eddie Van Halen. Back in the day, simply hot! Now? Well, take a look for yourself. Time has done to him what it has done to all of us - made us softer around the edges, fluffier and, well, wrinklier if you will.

Whitesnake, Great White, Motley Crue - these guys were the shit back in the day. Now, though, they are simply older musicians who, if they are still living the dream, are doing so playing in pool halls and convalescent homes. (That’s ok by me; when they lock me up in one of those nursing homes I want to know that Friday night’s dinner will be accompanied by a large glass of vino and the sounds of Jon Bon Jovi. I’m good with that!)

At some point, when I wasn’t looking, I went from listening to hard core rock and roll to Disney tunes and songs that had lines like:

Just a boy and a girl in a little canoe
With the moon shining all around

And, my friends, during this transition those rockers I loved were cutting their hair, getting married, and aging. Just like me.

I guess it happens to all of us.

And while this doesn’t make me feel any better about it all, I do wonder what Axl thinks when he hears himself being described as a classic rocker. Im sure, just for one second, he is back in his Camaro with the T-tops open, banging his head along in time to a tune about a girl with eyes of the bluest skies; and, for one instant, he’s young again.

For my classic rock friends, to times remembered. May this make you feel young again. (Oh, and I have to add the link, not the video, because my mom has dial up and if I attempt to embed anything into my post her computer may implode).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-AYAv0IoWI
 

Yesterday I ran into a friend’s twenty-something child while in Target. When I told her I’m turning forty soon, she had the nerve to say as she patted my hand and gave me a wink, “But didn’t you know - forty’s the new twenty!”

Are you kidding me?

Tell that to my cracked knees, my arthritic hands, my graying hair, my sagging boobs.

“Oh yea, ” I retorted, cradling my Starbucks in one hand and a bottle of hemorrhoid cream in the other. “So what does that make you, a newborn?”

Forty is the new twenty only when you aren’t turning forty.

I don’t want to be forty. People say it’s great, it’s all good, they are so happy where they are in life that it doesn’t matter.

It effing matters.

There. I said it. Turning Forty Sucks.

Why Turning Forty Sucks: An Essay by A Menopausal Mom

I hate it that more than half my life ago I was in high school. Not that I liked high school; I hated it, too. But at least I had youth on my side when I was in high school. My eyes weren’t perpetually burdened by dark lines, and odd stray hairs didn’t pop up in funky places. My joints didn’t ache before it rained, and my hands were not wrinkled.

Why Twenty Was Good

My breasts, never large, were at least perky and cute, and my stomach, never completely small, didn’t contain this kangaroo pouch - the leftover remnants of two C-sections. I could hold my farts, most of the time, and that goes for my pee as well. Preparing for long trips didn’t make me want to OD on Valium, and I could stay up all night long drinking shots of anything and still look great (well, at least halfway decent) the next day.

I was young. I had life in front of me.

Now, seriously, what do I have to look forward to?

1. Menopause
2. Retirement
3. Death (That’s the end, folks!)

So I thought I’d make a list of the great things I can see about turning forty.

1. (There is nothing here)

Since I can’t seem to think of anything, I thought I’d make another list of things that are great about not being twenty.

1. I can buy booze now.
2. I can hold down a steady job.
3. I don’t have to date strange guys anymore as I try to find ‘my type.’

The rest, well, I liked.

I liked staying up all night, drinking shots of tequila while dancing around as though I were the hottest number this side of the Mississippi.

I enjoyed being stupid and dumb and ‘young.’

I liked knowing I could dream and dream and dream and maybe some of those dreams could come true - and that, even if they couldn’t come true, I had time on my side just in case.

Now, rather than dream I just want to nap. Like sands in the hourglass, as they say, these are the last days of my life.

I don’t have time left to write that great novel as an aspiring ‘young’ author. I don’t have time to make it big in Hollywood, even if i do go through extreme plastic surgery. And even if i do have time to become a doctor or a lawyer or some other high paying professional, I don’t have ‘time.’ I have children. A house. A family.

I no longer say, “This is what I want to do in my life.” I say, “This is what I hope for my children.”

When did this change?

So I have to do something extreme now, of course, to make up for it. To say, “Holy shit, forty IS the new twenty!”

I’m married, so becoming a cougar is out.

I’ve already run a marathon, so that is off the list, too.

Sky diving doesn’t thrill me, and quite honestly backpacking around Europe at my age seems, well, weird.

No, I have to think of something, and something soon. I only have a few months. I’m asking for your advice on this, folks. Please, tell me something I could do to embrace forty, to make me feel twenty again.

In the meantime, I’m off to waste hundreds of dollars on various lotions and creams that I hope will make me look, well, if not twenty then at least thirty-something.

Hey, that’s better than nothing!