It's always upsetting when you realize a lot of people are younger than you are. Really, everyone no longer in elementary, junior high, or high school should be older than I am. There are certain kinds of people, though, whose youthfulness is especially egregious.
1) Doctors
Doctors should not be younger than I am. Doctors, from what I know of them from 1990s television, spend approximately 25 years in school, and then an additional 56 years as residents. They spend years and years falling in love with one another, having sex in closets, developing tragic friendships with people who are dying, and fighting off knife-wielding attackers in the emergency room before they become actual doctors. So the fact that every specialist I see looks at me appraisingly from eyes that never appraised the 1980s is upsetting and wrong and generally unacceptable.
2) Newscasters
Newscasters should not be younger than I am. Sure, the ones who look a little bit like high-class prostitutes or rich men's mistresses - they can be youthful (in that soon-to-overripe kind of way). But the ones who've cut their call-girl hair and developed those immovable hair hats should not be younger than I am. They are supposed to give the impression of gravely delivering grave news they don't fully understand because they're newscasters, not journalists, god dammit, and they're supposed to do so using lips that existed prior to the year 1990.
3) Mothers in telephone/internet provider commercials
Actresses playing mothers in telephone/ internet provider commercials should not be younger than I am. You know the ones I mean - they're often ethically ambiguous, not actively attractive, but not noticeably unattractive, and they are enviable because they are lucky enough to have husbands who don't know how to use the television remote and children who have attitudes and inappropriate boyfriends. They look both despairing ("That's a remote, you darling, hapless man!") and smug ("I have a husband, children and a television, you darling, hapless spinster!"), and as of a couple of years ago, they started looking about ten years younger than I am.
Thank God I'm not a successful professional or a contented family woman, or I'd be surrounded by such upstarts all the time.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
I am going to include a whole, unexpurgated poem below (but in tiny font, so that it seems slightly less important than my writing and so that it doesn't make this post look excessively long), both because it helps to establish my intellectual credibility and because it's the complete darn poem that scares me so much. Here it is:
Aubade - Philip Larkin
I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Allow me to summarize the poem: we are all going to die. Everyone claims to know this, but if everyone really knew this, wouldn't everyone be rushing about, grabbing everyone else by the shoulders and crying: "Oh my God, we're all going to die!"
We spend so much time worrying about ways in which we can die prematurely. What if we are trapped on this sinking ship? What if we become inside-tummy-friends with that peckish shark? What if this monorail is unstable? We concentrate so much on potentially avoidable disasters that we forget that even if we escape that ship, out-swim that shark (highly unlikely, by the way), travel safely on that monorail, we are headed for death nonetheless.
Have you seen Up? Don't. It's one of the most genuinely wrenching films ever made. In it, and this is in the first five minutes so I'm not really giving that much away, two people who love one another manage to avoid dying "too soon", spend a great deal of time together, and love one another faithfully and truly for many years. Until they are very old. What happens when we are old? Even if we managed to sidestep the scourge of the flesh-eating disease in our youth? We die. So death happens to one member of this couple, and do you think it's perfectly fine because they are old and have had "good lives"? No. This is one of the few films that depicts a romance between people who are now old, and it indicates that loss doesn't get any easier.
Now I feel low. But that's how I felt when I began this, so I suppose I shouldn't be astonished. But wait...did I mention that Up also features a genuinely adorable dog? Who talks like a person? That's something.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page. POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
If you were a movie or television show, which one would you be? Would you be: The Seventh Seal (not to be confused with the searingly honest Demi Moore / Michael Biehn vehicle The Seventh Sign); Ally McBeal (dated reference that might no longer have any purchase with today’s youth); High School Musical (compensating for the previous example with bracing contemporaneity); or, the first three-quarters of Hannah and Her Sisters?
Why not find out by taking the Catastrophizer’s Are You Bergman, Efron, Woody or McBeal quiz? I know “Woody” stands out because it is the first name rather the last, but I was worried you’d think I meant the Alexander Viets Griswold Allen.
1. What do you think when you hold a friend's newborn baby?
a) Oh my God, I'm going to drop it. Or sicken it. Or otherwise ruin it.
b) This child is beautiful, as is life, which alas is doomed to end in death.
c) This child will soon be a toddler, and then a teenager, and before you know it, it will be as annoying as its parents.
d) I love babies. They're ADORABLE.
2. How do you respond when you've gotten a new job?
a) Have I forgotten my security pass on my first day? Did I lose my day-planner? Are these nude nylons form-flattering?
b) However long this job lasts, it cannot last forever, as nothing lasts forever. We are all doomed to die.
c) It might start off well, but soon I'll be disappointing my coworkers, and then my bosses, and then they'll fire me, and soon this whole nauseating cycle will begin all over again.
d) This is awesome! I'm going to dress appropriately and make new friends!
3. What's your attitude towards a new romantic relationship?
a) Why didn't I wash my sexier underwear? Are my nails dirty? Should they be dirty? Does that mole look worrisome?
b) It doesn't matter if this relationship succeeds, because ultimately we'll both die.
c) If tonight I say something that he/she finds irritating, the rot will begin to set in, because inevitably I'll do it again, and then it will seem like a pattern, and he/she will break up with me. I won't mourn forever, thank God, because ultimately I'll die.
d) He/she is so hot! I love love. It's awesome, just like my friends' babies.
4. How do you feel about your personal appearance?
a) Is one of my breasts and/or testicles larger than the other? Is that normal? Will my boyfriend and/or girlfriend think that's normal? Why is my torso so unusually long?
b) I will never be more attractive than I am right now, because each minute that passes, I age and sag. Ultimately, I will die.
c) I don't mind the way I look, but there's no guarantee that anyone else will ever find me attractive, or that even if they say they do, they can be believed.
d) I'm super-hot, not like my friends who have babies.
Answer Key: A: You're A Nervie! If you tended to choose A’s, you are dangerously neurotic and resemble Ally McBeal. She has, however, ended up with Han Solo, so maybe there’s a rakish space-pirate with a hidden heart of gold in your future. B: You A Bergman!If you were drawn to the B’s, you are dangerously morbid and fond of the films of Swedish tear-mongerer Ingmar Bergman (not to be confused with Ingrid, who was not quite as hot). His real first name was “Ernst”, but “Ingmar” is clearly hotter. C: You're A CATASTROPHYTE ! If you consistently selected the C’s, you love the first three-quarters of Hannah and Her Sisters (Mickey: A week ago I bought a rifle, I went to the store - I bought a rifle! I was gonna, you know, if they told me I had a tumor, I was gonna kill myself. The only thing that might’ve stopped me - MIGHT’VE - is that my parents would be devastated. I would have to shoot them also, first. And then I have an aunt and uncle - you know - it would’ve been a blood bath), but think it goes downhill at the end by embracing hope and the promise of new life. D: You're An Upbeat!If you are a “D” person, why are you reading this? Go out and play some ultimate frisbee. POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
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