Didja Get the Memo?

It was a Friday morning; but it was also the day after Christmas and thus a day off work for me. So I got up early to go to the gym instead of getting up early to go to work. I hardly ever sleep late anymore. It's one of the things that I don't like about aging.

The gym was moderately full with people doing treadmill penance for Christmas dinner, and with the usual middle-aged muscleheads who'll lift 'til they die, and even with a personal trainer or two and their clients. The trainers are independent businesspeople, but they have some sort of arrangement with the gym to use the facilities.

One of the PTs was working a client on the other side of the pulley cage from where I was grunting through my ab pulldowns. This guy is as hard as nails and handsome. But a little battered, too, like an over-testosteroned Ken doll (Barbie's boyfriend) that's been left out in the sun for 40 years. "Ken" is a jittery guy, always moving, always spitting out words in short, rapid bursts. He pushes his clients hard, but not excessively so.

Attractive female clients, though, Ken doesn't push quite so hard. He likes talking to them, and it slows down the workout a little. But the women don't seem to mind because although he's got a lot of miles on his odometer, there's still a testosterone-supercharged Ken doll under that crinkly skin.

This morning's trainee was indeed a woman, heaving into view of 50 but trim and dirty blonde and attractive. Maybe not quite the Barbie doll type, but definitely Barbie's less flashy friend Midge 30 years on. I sensed that she made Ken's hormones' combust, though he stayed as professional and (more or less) gentlemanly as ever. But there was a lot more chitchat than usual.

So they were talking back and forth about life and such, and I hear "Midge" say, "I'm tired going out with the guys I meet at meetings," she says. "I mean, there are a lot of hot guys at AA, but I don't trust any of them."

"Date NORMALS!" Ken said. "I KNOW what I'm sayin'. I DON'T meet women at AA. Why go out with somebody from a MEETING when there are 100 NORMAL woman I can get next to?

"I'm beginning to see that," said the woman. She sighed. And I staggered off to the pullup station and stopped listening. It's pretty damned easy to hear 12-step gossip in Santa Cruz.

Back before email, back when people communicated at work by dropping hard-copy messages in the in-boxes on each others' desks, we would have said that Midge "didn't get the memo." The memo that reads "Never, ever go to bed with anybody who has more problems than you do." That one's a classic, one of the three great mistakes (along with eating dinner at a restaurant called Mom's, and playing poker with a guy named Doc).

On the other hand, Ken and Midge were both in AA; so they at least must have gotten the memo that reads "Excessive drinking just makes your problems worse." Maybe not as soon as they'd have liked, but it did get there eventually.

There are hundreds of memos, and the reality is that they never all hit your in-box right away. Sure, some memos are with you from Day One. Others -- Day Fifteen Thousand. And some of them may never arrive.

Did you get all of these memos? Hope so, but this list is only a tiny fragment of the MemoVerse:

• It's not okay to sleep with your partner's best friend.
• Regular personal hygiene is a necessary part of life.
• Repeatedly showing up late for work leads to unemployment.
• Men: If a woman tells you on the first date that she's high maintenance -- believer her and get out of there.
• Women: If a guy tells you on the first date that his hobby (whatever it is) is the most important thing in his life, believe him and get out of there.
• Repeating the same mistake over and over is kind of crazy. (Attachment: If your romantic interests have all been jerks or bitches, it's not just bad luck.)
• Save up money before spending it. (Attachment: Credit is not money.)
• The guy who speaks loudest in meetings usually doesn't have a clue.
• Pointing out people's mistakes will not make you popular. (Attachment: Popularity isn't everything.)
• Take people at face value -- unless they're asking for money or sex.
• Real estate always goes down. Eventually.
  

As I got to about age 50, memos started arriving regularly. It's not like I hadn't heard the advice before. But it finally sank in how they actually applied to me.

In recent years I've been getting little "pops" of realization along the line of, "Hey, you know that nagging problem that pops up wherever you go? YOU'RE CAUSING IT!" And I won't say my life has turned around, but I'm a little more in charge of it all than I used to be.

This kind of perspective is the one thing I like about getting older, and it more than makes up for not being able to sleep late anymore.

But I really to know what brings about these rather tardy flashes of insight. Is it just a matter of piling up enough life experience? Or, after 50 years, does the brain finally make enough cross-connections to efficiently sort through the tottering stacks of memories and extract some icky truths from them? I don't know.

Mid-life crisis? More like mid-life opportunity. Now if I can just make some real progress before Social Security kicks in.

Hey, you fiftyish ones out there: gotten any good memos lately?