Excuse Me While I Disappear: Tales of Midlife Mayhem

by Laurie Notaro

I’ve realized that nearly every day, I learn something new. That means that, at my age now, I have so much more knowledge and perspective than I did at twenty-seven. I’ve seen more things, had more experiences, and am honestly smarter than I was thirty years ago. There simply is no arguing with that.

Aren’t you proud that you know how to use a dial phone? That you lived a whole, full life without a digital device in your pocket? You remember who Gilligan is! You watched Fonzie jump the shark! You remember when coming in second place was still awesome. You know how to use a phone book and roll down a window manually. You probably drove a stick shift. As a kid, you played outside all day until dinner.

You lived in a time when you could walk your loved ones all the way to the gate in an airport. The guy who sang your favorite song on the radio wasn’t also a model. You know what “Where’s the beef?” means and remember when everyone ate Hamburger Helper. You watched Jaws at the drive-in. We have seen a lot. We survived Aqua Net. We were the last generation of children to ride in a car without seat belts! And there’s nothing shameful in saying that.

We invented punk rock, then grunge. None of the Kardashians belong in our group, not even the mother. That alone makes us the fairest generation of them all. We didn’t invent the internet, but we had the first email addresses, and we remember Netscape and Ask Jeeves.

There is so much responsibility in getting older. There are so many pills to take for sore eyes, dry eyes, dry mouth, rubber-band knees, achy toes, low blood pressure, high blood pressure.

Recently, I’d found him collapsed on the floor, not moving but beet red, and I’d had to kick him several times before he showed any sign of life by gasping that he was just doing “yoga.”

the entire population of middle-aged women are showing up to work on three hours of sleep (some with their night meds still coursing through their bloodstream), running meetings, making deadlines, and putting curses on their bosses. (It was just a little packet of dirt from a graveyard sprinkled in their office.) And the rest of the world has no idea. Why? Because we are superwomen. Because it’s how we are.

If my husband doesn’t get his full eight hours, he’ll mention it the whole next day, as if he spent the dark time keeping flesh-eating zombies from gaining entry to our house. Not middle-aged women. They get up from a bed they’ve never slept in, put on an underwire and some mascara, and do it all over again. And no one knows.

I live in Eugene, Oregon, where people are so far to the left that they have almost looped around again to the right, and they have no problem demanding that other people not ruin their nature walks by doing laundry. This attitude is super typical of the neighborhood. We are liberated and free! We delight in passing that liberation on to others by telling everyone else exactly how to live.

Biking is just walking with round feet . . .

I made a phone call and was shocked when I got a follow-up email asking if I could make a coffee shop meeting at 8:00 a.m. the next day. On a regular morning, I wasn’t even drinking my first cup of coffee at 8:00 a.m., let alone being showered, dressed, and ready to talk about a job. I wondered if there hadn’t been a mistake. I didn’t remember jobs starting so early,

People act poorly because other people have let them act poorly, and they have been able to get away with it for a lifetime. There is no sense of consequence.

“You get one free question a day. One. Any questions after that, I charge a dollar per answer. Three dollars for an answer I have to repeat. Do you understand?” “Why?” he asked. This is the reason we don’t keep weapons in the house.

We work so well together that I’ve almost suggested we heist a bank.