It isn’t that my turning 45 is a big deal, or anything. Age isn’t the concern, when mind and body are still willing. The problem is that sputtering into mid-life allows most of us to become the characterization of the person we feared people would discover, when we cared. Put succinctly, our cartoon selves.
Perhaps I'm speaking from my perspective alone, but during puberty and through the most vital period of our lives, we spend an inordinate amount of time hiding our true selves, because as we all know; being yourself won’t get you laid. When we reach, say, 45: the point when death is within our reach; that is when we give in to our innate characters and take our chances. My birthday of last weekend gave me the opportunity to embrace the grotesque sketch of my true self. And what or who is that, I hope to hear you say? “That” is the sex-starved, depressive, death-fearing Alvy Singer in Annie Hall. Just ask Hope. She’s my Diane Keaton.
Hope: “Get your hands off my ass! You’ve always got your hands on my ass!”
Alvy: “You should be flattered. It’s where I want to be.”
Hope: “What is wrong with you.
Alvy: “You’re asking a forty-five year old guy what’s wrong with him when he has his hand on your tush?”
Hope: “What’s the opposite of Viagra?”
Alvy: “I don’t know. You, right now?”
Hope: “Listen, I get the fact that you think you’re going to die and that this might be your last chance to get some, but why does the mourning of your life always involve my ass?”
Alvy: “Oh, so now you want me dead with no where to put it?”
Hope: “I bend over and whoop, there it is: "The Hand." Can’t you take your mind off of it?”
Alvy: Errr. No.
Hope: “You’re a sick puppy, you know that, don’t you?”
Alvy: “My only explanation is that I have to have sex with you all the time out of frustration that you won’t have sex with me! When I get nervous. I get aroused.”
Hope: “Lucky me.”
Alvy: "I’m going down to my cave to contemplate why swimming and libido remind me of the same thing. Happy birthday to me."
