The Show Must Go On

Ahhh, the many wonderful stages of life! No, I’m not talking about phases of life, since phase is just a nice coping word we use to try and explain someone else’s irrational behavior when it pokes its irrational head out from beneath the rational rock it’d been hiding under. Life stages are legitimate and worth exploring in order to help us understand ourselves and each other a bit better.

A common misconception is that we go through major physical changes every seven years or so, signifying a new stage of life. The truth is less defined. For instance, our skin cells replace themselves every few weeks, and some gut cells do this in a matter of days. In an unfair twist, skeletal muscle cells take about fifteen years to regenerate, while fat cells can take up to seventy years! Dammit, donuts, why do you have to taste so good?! And broccoli, why do you have to taste…like broccoli?

But enough about biology. Today’s post is all about rolling with the myriad physical and emotional challenges we all go through during some of life’s stages in order to survive and thrive in this wild existence. This is not a comprehensive list containing all of the life stages you studied in your Human Growth and Development class, but my far less-qualified perspective on the subject. So, if you haven’t fallen asleep or moved on to playing Candy Crush Saga on your wicked smart phone by now, I invite you to join me for a brief highlight tour through our lives.

Stage 1: Childhood

Yay! We have people that take care of us, we get to play with Lego®, and let our imaginations run wild. Our little bodies are full of energy and the world is full of wonder. Sure, there are temper tantrums, but they usually pass quick, and not being tall enough to reach the cookies on top of the fridge can be rough, but all in all, it’s a pretty cool time in our lives. If we’re even luckier, our folks get us a kitten or a puppy to grow up and be best friends with. Double yay! And our grandparents adore our chubby little cheeks. We love our parents so much that we even want to marry them when we get older and live happily ever after.

Stage 2: Adolescence

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!

Nobody cares, understands, or feels like we do, and more tragic atrocities abound, some even valid. Our dramatic sighs, eye rolls, hair flips, foot stomps, and more physical reactions resonate through our house and down our high school halls. Early in this stage, our hormones are a crazy mess, and we bounce between hugging our parents and hating them on a daily basis. As we progress, we ignore the parental figures altogether while striving to figure out our place in the teenage social hierarchy. Life is so unfair, and we can’t wait to reach all of the freedom benchmark ages of sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-one, so we can ditch all these restrictions and the old people who literally don’t know anything.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!

Stage 3: Young Adulthood (AKA: false adulthood)

Alright, now we’re talking! We can drink legally, we’ve partied and enjoyed most of the exploratory freedom that college affords us, and we have all the excitement of new romantic relationships, having friends over to our first apartments, and staying up as late as we want. Our bodies recover from most of the abuses we put them through, and our optimism is only eclipsed by our idealism. Hell, even our parents finally start making some sense, and we wonder why it took them so long to be as smart as we are. Look out world, here we come, to change you for the better. Nothing stands in our way, woo hoo!

Stage 3-A: Real Adulthood

UGH. Babies, diapers, and sleepless nights. Bills and working overtime to pay for them. Training pants, training wheels, stepping barefoot on Lego® bricks, watching all the versions of Frozen a hundred times each, school concerts, and graduations for preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school. Chugging a lot of coffee. The huge mortgage, home repairs, mowing the lawn, paying taxes, dealing with crappy bosses and lazy co-workers all show us what adulthood really looks like. Eating PB&J for lunch and mac-n-cheese for dinner. You start to sort out your real friends from the fake ones, and are too tired to change the channel, never mind the world. UGH.

Stage 4: Middle Age

No, not the Middle Ages, with all those cool metal suits, swilling ale, and eating all our food with a knife. I’m talking about middle age, with all those 3-piece suits, swilling Alka-Seltzer, and eating more broccoli. Strange new ailments pop up left and right, we grunt every time we get up from a chair, and that spare tire shows up around our midsection. We’re old enough to know better, but still try to act young on the weekends, before suffering through the mandatory recovery period, which takes longer than before. Our eyes have failed us, and each room of the house has at least one pair of cheaters lying around, yet we’re forever looking for those darn things. Our kids are graduating high school and going off to college, or entering the workforce and getting their first apartment. If things have gone well, we have more time off, though the house feels empty with the kids gone, and we’re learning how to co-exist with our spouse without the distractions. We now recognize special moments when they happen and try to hold onto them tight. Hey, at least there’s the excitement of buying that famed midlife crisis car, right? Please, tell me I’m right!

Stage 5: The Golden Years

Which brilliant marketing agent came up with this load of crap, anyway? I know a bunch of folks who are lining up to express their appreciation to them…in-person. And who is that old dude looking back at me in the mirror every morning?! Sure, we have more time and more money to do things we’ve put off for too long, but our body reminds us that most of those things are going to hurt like hell. We start uttering phrases like: “back in my day” and “you kids don’t know how good you have it” to everyone younger than us. The pharmacist knows us by our first name, or at least by our medication’s name. Diet and exercise are more important than ever, and we make a deal with our significant other to avoid carbs and booze for at least four days a week, unless it’s Free Carb Friday. We’re either retiring or getting close. The recliner feels way too good as we binge-watch our favorite shows each night, probably with an ice pack wrapped around an offending appendage or two, courtesy of our Uncle Arthur-itis. Our heating bill begins to creep up with the thermostat setting each winter, and we begin perusing real estate listings in Florida or the Carolinas. If we’re lucky, giggling grandkids grace our weeks, creating the bond that only our two generations can pull off together. And our kids are wondering where all that easygoing, carefree attitude was when they were being raised by us, hmmm….

I could focus in on some of the fun we’ve chosen to amuse ourselves with during these stages (Bungee jumping, really?? What part of wrapping a glorified rubber band around our ankles and plunging a hundred feet upside-down seemed like a good idea??), but I have to end this post sometime, or as those in the industry say: it's time to exit, stage left!

Regardless of which of the preceding stages you currently reside within, please remember to find a reason to appreciate each day, and look for ways to make others’ lives better. We’re all in it together, so let’s do this! After all, any day can become a good old day if we view it from the right perspective. Even for you teenagers… GAAAAAH!

Hey, and whatever you are, be a good one.

-Dave