#396 Horror Help

I’m never much concerned about Halloween and all that spooky supernatural stuff. Reality has all the horrors anyone will ever need. And the most horrendous of them all is age. Forget about the living dead, it’s the living-still-living that’s really scary. For many men and women midlife hits around fifty. Funny, since most of us never live to be anywhere close to 100, so 50 is really post-mid-life. Some get a jump on things and start around 45. In this case the early bird doesn’t get the worm. Unless by worm you mean five extra years to be miserable. At fifty-four I’ve been tumbled through most of the mid-life crisis wave. Mid-life, like adolescence, should be one of those recognized phases of development you read about in all the parenting books. Unfortunately, there is no specific set of guidelines to help, only books that deal with the effects of mid-life—the wandering eye, the is-this-all-there-is, the I-just-want-to-be-young-again personality spurts caused by fluctuating hormone levels. Hormones for both males and females wildly oscillate during this period. Sex drives soar and plummet, hot flashes abound, and anger flares. The whole world starts to look like it’s conspiring against you to make you bitter, unhappy, and worst of all in my case, a constant grouser. The tendency is to chuck everything, throw out the baby, the bathwater, and the bathtub. What’s funny is that on the other end of the hormone fluctuation spectrum we have teenagers. And everyone knows that’s going to be a wild ride. But everyone who has ever had a teenager emerge into adulthood knows that they do come out of it and they are a lot easier to live with when they do. All of the books and counselors seem to agree that the best course through adolescence is to let your kids know you care, rein in their excesses with some judicious restrictions, and keep a firm and steady course yourself, lest your teenager sense weakness and do their best to drive a wedge into the family unit. Us oldsters face a similar path. Unfortunately, we don’t have any parents to say hold on, it’ll get better. So we rant and rail and challenge each other to see who can get highest on the mood swings before we jump off, and generally crush anything or anyone stupid enough to stand in front of our hormone steamroller. It’s too bad all the “self help” people, the psychologist equivalent of televangelists, don’t offer a praise God and an Amen to get us through. But no, the self-help industry is dependent on people needing help just like churches are dependent on sinners. And like some doctors, they can make a lot more money treating symptoms than offering a cure. Self-help authors would put themselves out of business if their advice were that good. And, horrors, they’d be thrust back into writing bosom-heaver romances. Whenever I look at a self-help book, I look up a bio on the author. Funny how few of them are happy.
America, ya gotta love it.