Post-40 birthdays are no party

I recently celebrated my 44th birthday, though celebrate may be too strong a word.

At this point in life, you're not exactly springing out of bed at the crack of dawn in order to get an early start on the festivities, if you catch my drift.

Chances are, at 44, you're suffering from some sort of chronic sleep disorder that causes you to snap awake at 3 a.m. and doesn't permit you to fall back asleep until five minutes before the alarm goes off.

As a result, you wake up each morning feeling as though someone had stuffed your skull with Shredded Wheat and your eyes have the swollen, bloated look one normally associates with drowning victims.

Before you can even think of shuffling numbly off in the direction of the kitchen for that first life-giving cup of coffee, you've got to take a few precautionary puffs on the asthma inhaler to make sure you're still breathing when your wife hands you the obligatory "humorous" card involving birthday candles and smoke alarms.

Then you probably want to knock back a couple swigs of Tagamet to soothe the stomach in case someone gives you a necktie with palm trees and leaping dolphins on it, as they surely will.

Since your hands are shaking violently at the prospect of hearing "Happy Birthday" sung to you before you've even had a sip of orange juice, it is probably best to forego shaving. Just slap a little cold water on your face and, if possible, avoid looking in the mirror, as the blotchy, puffy reflection will make you feel worse than when your wife threw you that surprise "Lordy, Lordy, Look Who's 40" party four years ago (assuming such a thing is possible, which it probably isn't).

Fortunately, at age 44, one's birthdays tend to be rather streamlined affairs. The only balloons you're likely to get at this stage in your life are the ones used to inflate your coronary arteries.

"Happy birthday, here's your `Birthday Boy' coffee mug, now how about climbing up on the roof and cleaning out those gutters like you've been promising for the past two months, huh?" pretty much captures the depth of the sentiment.

Cake and ice cream is out of the question, given your cholesterol readings, and it's not likely that you're going to be surrounded by friends and family, in light of that ugly scene you made at the "Lordy, Lordy, Look Who's 40" party four years ago.

About the best you can hope for is that it will be over quickly and you'll have a couple of free hours to relax with a good book, which is increasingly hard to find, given your ever-narrowing tastes in literature.

You reread Catcher in the Rye recently to see if it was appropriate for the 10-year-old and found yourself growing increasingly impatient with Holden Caulfield, whom you adored when you read the book last at age 14.

Holden, like you, tends to find fault with everybody and everything and is just generally a big pain in the butt. By the time you're halfway through the book, you just want to smack him, which is probably not the reader reaction the author intended.

It makes you wonder how The Catcher in the Rye came to be considered one of the great works of American literature when the main character is as annoying as Holden Caulfield.

Thinking about this for any length of time brings on a splitting headache, followed by exhaustion so profound it's all you can do to stay awake for the "party," which consists of blowing out a single candle stuck in a multi-grain bagel.

Hopefully, you'll be able to get it on the first puff.

David Grimes is a columnist for the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Fla. His column is distributed by The N.Y. Times News Service.

Copyright 1996
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