Excuse Me While I Disappear: Tales of Midlife Mayhem

by Laurie Notaro

Get a wig. Initially, this seemed like a great idea. Can you imagine putting on your hair like a bra? It would be that easy! Then I actually tried a few on at the mall’s wig store and instantly

I have scars that look like I got them in prison,

I still rock combat boots with dresses. I still wear whore-red lipstick. I still call everyone “dude.” I’m still me, and now I have the silver hair to prove that I belong to the coolest generation alive, even if we’re not doing cocaine and eating powdered doughnuts at brunch after all.

It was expensive, but I really wanted peaches, and I had a weak moment. I put them in a paper bag to ripen, and in two days, when they felt perfect, I bit into the most disgusting, inedible peach I had ever had.

I’m not advocating that all mature women start helping themselves to a late-in-life five-finger discount, but if you’re going to fail to notice my existence, I’m entitled to a rotisserie chicken every now and then.

it is possible to fart without effort. You’ll be doing absolutely nothing, and it’ll slip out like air from a ragged old tire. If you’ve ever seen your dog do it, you will have a very similar reaction. Shock. Horror. Disgust.

You just have to be careful not to go all Rudy Giuliani and use so much that it drools down your face like an oil rig is hovering above you.

So imagine me fifteen minutes after my doctor insisted that I allow the full inspection. I have never been so sober and so naked in my entire life. I thought this kind of scrutiny was reserved for corpses that died under mysterious circumstances. But there I was, having my own live autopsy being performed under million-watt lights.

“Are you the Laurie Notaro that writes the books?” the doctor paused to ask. The same thing happens to me every single time my credit card gets declined or I’m at a doctor’s office for private reasons.

Expert Tip: “Your ankles are swollen from carrying the weight of the patriarchy all of these years.”—Danika Hill, MAW

The day after that, I ate a Triscuit, and one of my molars collapsed, as if the Taliban had mistaken it for a holy relic and blown it up.

But it’s really the cracking that I’m afraid of. I once turned my head two inches and heard that awful sound—and froze for as long as I could stand it, sure that I had just broken my own neck.

Everyone in Arizona has skin cancer. It’s so common that it should really appear on the license plate instead of a cactus.

And you already have a pill identifier in this house—me. Show it to me. I’ll tell you what it is. Pink, yellow, white, oblong, capsule, round, whatever. If it’s still lying around this house, it isn’t any fun.”

But when an AARP magazine arrived with what appeared to be Matthew McConaughey on the cover, there was no ignoring it. The movie star’s eyes had pronounced bags, and his wrinkles were deeper than I had ever seen before. It looked like the heartthrob had been Photoshopped, but in reverse.

“I’m in a women’s writing circle, and we took a poll,” Michelle said. “All twelve of us are on pot gummies.” “We’re all on pot gummies,” Erica agreed. “Middle-aged women and pizza delivery guys are keeping the industry alive.” “Even my mother takes pot gummies,” Judy added.

I can’t believe this, I rage-thought to myself. If I die half naked and bloody because I made a cake, I am going to . . . actually, that’s a pretty good story. Too bad I won’t be around to tell it.

“Mom, I have the second-best Nextdoor.com post in the history of Nextdoor.com!” I exclaimed. “If this is an internet porn thing, I’m hanging up right now and then hanging myself,” she replied.

Please don’t be the guy who parked so close to me that I had to climb in through the passenger side, compelling me to leave a note on his car that said, “Great job, FUCKFA,” because the only piece of paper in my purse was oily in spots and would not accept the ink for the “CE.”

But I am a different breed, and I had shed almost all of my fear coat.

I was also at a point in my life when calling people out for their unfair behavior was not only clearly the right thing to do but also the only thing to do.

It may have taken my entire tenure there to get all of my coworkers to see me, but leave it to an invisible woman to yell so loud when it counts that no force can drown her out.

“I’ve heard it’s not so bad,” he said with a smile that was fifteen years away from anal penetration with a GoPro.

My husband drove me to the appointment with a promise that I could stuff my big fat starving face with IHOP pancakes afterward. I’m sure that IHOP, the closest restaurant to the hospital, does great business with the post-colonoscopy crowd.

After your colonoscopy, you will feel a very strong urge to pass gas. DO NOT DO IT. You must wait until you have pants on, because otherwise your jelly-lubricated fart will land on the floor, in front of your husband and the nurse, who will then have to bend down and clean it up.

We are not born old. We worked to get there.

“You do know that listening to ‘Man in the Box’ now sounds like when our parents listened to ‘Rock Around the Clock,’” I told her. “SHIT!” she screamed.

Hey, here’s a bulky sleep apnea vest; we’re going to strap this to your chest, and it’s going to make you look like a suicide bomber. (Actual question from the technician who strapped it on me: “You didn’t have plans to go to the airport tonight, did you?”)

I wanted to say, “Then let’s sign you up for carpentry, plumbing, and digging classes with the time you spend watching reruns of Veronica Mars,” but I didn’t because at that moment we both suspected I had given him COVID, so the timing was not the best.

I entered into a contract over a quarter of a century ago to marry this man and to spend the rest of my life choosing not to kill him.