The bakery and Zumba are not the only places I exclusively hang out with women. It seems to me most men don’t have much opportunity to do that, but I have not had a group of men I hung out with in, well, actually, never. I don’t form gangs or teams much. I try to be alert but according to the ladies, I missed a look from one of the customers this morning. I saw her come in, she was attractive, but I didn’t see her give me the eye. Everyone other than me picked it on up.
This ensued a lively conversation about ages. It is strange how women are hung up on that issue, yet age is probably the worst criteria for judging people. I know the issue is complicated because there are certain things that come with age and other things that are expected over time. It is when emotions come into play that people get all confused. And, I think, a lot of people are conditioned by society to place too much emphasis on “appropriate” age groupings.
Myself, I don’t base anything on actual age, but I do watch closely for evidence of a productive life (accomplishments) up to any given point. In my books you don’t have to be mature at 30, but you darn well better be self-supporting. You don’t have to be rich but you should know what doesn’t work. And you don’t have to have been constantly in love the whole time but you should know how to flat outright discourage the riff-raff. This outlook is consistent with everything else I’ve ever said. It is certainly an improvement over matching people up using age. You’d have more luck pairing them off by height or number of freckles.
Hence, the topic today was at what age do I think a woman is “old enough”? That’s easy. Only a complete idiot thinks a woman over 32 is “too young” for anything or anybody. Thinking anyone is too old for her raises the distinct evolutionary specter of extinction. There is far too much emphasis on the intangibles like maturity because the reality is there is just not that much emotional difference between a woman 32 or 52. Either you get along or you don’t, she ain’t gonna change. For the record, I get along fine with immature women—provided they, like myself, have something to show for the years put in.
This left the gang rather wide-eyed, as if men aren’t supposed to know such things. This next twist is tricky to follow, so read carefully. The ladies have a standing joke about my Zumba instructress, that she is too young for me. Really? I pointed out that in less than 6 short years, she’ll be 32 years old and probably single. Why? Because she is surrounded by nothing but men her own age who are horny losers looking at her to make up for lost time. She is bewildered by the lack of quality and I can’t blame her. Don’t tell the bunch, but she isn’t even my type. Her only talent seems to be looking good.
Another subject was my target weight. The inches I’ve lost lets me wear my good clothes again but no, I have not bought any clothes since the diet. My target weight is when my BMI (Body Mass Index) is between 20.8 and 21.1. There is no getting around this calculation, I always was a “skinny” kid. That’s a misnomer as my ribs never did show, so what I mean is there was not a single ounce of fat on me and I felt great. I gained only seven pounds in the twenty-one years leading up to my heart attack. I know my ideal weight is close to 20 pounds less than the average weight for my height and age group. If I was 20 pounds past my optimum, I’d look “puffy” and that is how I view many of the ostensibly average people at Zumba class.
ADDENDUM
The rumor and the reality. I’m going to dispel a rumor because I keep hearing it, usually people asking for more information. It goes like this. RofR and I were raised on the farm and when we got to university we had never before seen kids so rich that their parents paid for them to stay in school. The specific incident involved Harry we met at a college, who invited us to visit. As we pulled up in front of his house, he was sitting on the doorstep with the uncut lawn five inches deep and an electric lawnmower sitting there. As we talked RofR and I asked if the lawnmower worked. Sure it did, so as we went along, we took turns mowing the lawn. There was one last strip left when Harry stood up and said he wanted to give it a try.
Just as he finished that last few square feet, his father pulled up in a big boat of a Lincoln. He hopped out so stunned, he said he could not believe Harry had mowed the lawn without being asked. Right in front of us, he gave Harry $50. Neither of us had ever seen that much money in our lives. Fast forward to two years later, RofR and I are still starving students, plunging every deeper into student loan debt. We realized that we could not continue and made a plan. We talked about that $50 and RofR asked me plaintively, “Where is that in my life?”
We drew straws, the winner was to continue in school, the loser was to go to work and send him spending money. Back then student loans didn’t give you any spending money and we both realized if we were ever to meet nice girls, it would be on campus, not out in the real world. To this day I regret not marrying some gal I met in school. When the first guy graduated and started making money, he would turn around and pay the other guy to finish school. I was the other guy. I went to work in a lumber mill.
Four years later, RofR got an education degree and said it was my turn. But by that time I had just started a new job with the phone company and wanted to see how that turned out. I was expecting a meteoric rise to upper management. It turns out the phone company has no use for new ideas and intelligence. So it was mutually decided that I would cease sending RofR any money if he continued in university. He became a lawyer eight years later. I studied accounting, but never did get the degree I wanted. Instead, I was a CMA, which lacked the glamour and income, you might say.
Well, this story is a wild tale, a fabrication. Or at least 95% of it. We never drew straws. It was only $20. Both RofR and I had summer jobs and we’d seen money before. And so on, thus I deny that it happened the way the talk got around. All I will state is that the essence of the tale is true. But most of it is pure hard luck talk about two guys trying to get ahead.
