All right then, friends. What have we learned here?
When we started this book together, I mentioned that I didn’t know what it would be about. You probably thought I was kidding.
Jokes on you, huh?
To review: As I wrote for the sheer joy of seeing my thoughts become words, cackling like Gene Wilder bringing Peter Boyle to life, I found myself writing about a variety of disconnected things.
Let’s see, there was camping, and bison, and Las Vegas, and pancakes and Katherine the guitar.
Stone soup. The nothing isn’t connected to the anything. Totally random.
Maybe.
Or maybe all of the memories of a long-gone youth and all of the adventures in a muddled present were really stories about the same thing.
Maybe they were all about the struggle.
I used to sing “Darlin’ Be Home Soon” by John Sebastian when I performed at colleges and bars. For quite awhile I sang the line “…and now, a quarter of my life is nearly past…” just the way John wrote it. Then I changed it to “…a quarter of my life has surely passed…” then to “…long-since passed…”
Now I have arrived at “…now that half my life is surely passed…” and am heading for “…three-quarters of my life…”
That, I think, is what this book is about.
People of my generation are notorious over-thinkers, and I over-think that we’re taking a long, nervous time trying to figure out how to get older without getting old. I know that I struggle with the idea that I am no longer the carefree pseudo-hippie I once was. I’m past being a grown-up now, and I don’t know what to do about it.
So I write about it. I search for meaning in the mundane, to make some sense out of life before the basketball rolls under the oncoming truck.
I look for life lessons, and here’s one I got from this book: I like being this age. It’s nice to step out of the spotlight that is youth, to wear what’s comfortable instead of what’s fashionable, to not be embarrassed about an iPod full of British Invasion pop songs. I hope some of that joy is in these pages.
I always like meeting the new hires at my workplace. They are young, and talented and enthusiastic, and they fill the joint with the energy and possibilities of their youth.
And I wouldn’t be that age again for all the peach pies in Georgia.
I loved youth when I was young, but I can’t tell you how relieved I am to be rid of it. I don’t have a choice, I know, but if I did I would choose to get older rather than younger.
A quarter century ago I wouldn’t have believed I would ever say that, let alone mean it.
Something else I learned: I love writing about this stuff.
The final theory I will share in this book is my belief that every life is darned interesting, including mine. And I am just conceited enough to think that my generation – the ones who came of age in the nutsy 1960s and are trying to figure out how to live in the goofy 21st century – have some of the most interesting life stories around. We are partying like it’s 1969, and that sort of celebration deserves to be documented. Somebody ought to make some notes about what it’s like to be one of us, sailing towards the purple haze at the edge of the world.
I’ll take that job.
If I were 13, I would write it in a blog. Alas, I am 54, and not a blogger. I fear loss of eyesight and hairy palms, and I love the thought of ink on paper. So I’ll keep writing these books, and if nobody ever reads them they’ll hopefully be fun for my family to find after I’m gone.
I leave you, then, with one of my favorite bits of wisdom: In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, John Denver and Linda Ellerbee, “So it goes.”
Unless you prefer the Jethro Bodine version: “So it gozinta.”
See you next book.
