When indoor soccer season started three weeks ago, a bizarre thought struck me: that first game was taking place 50 years to the day from the first time I played soccer as a team sport.
I told the rest of my team. I was moderately confident that their response to the news would not be immediately involuntary euthanasia, partly because I immediately bought everyone a round of drinks, but mostly because I’m still a pretty fair goalie. Which might strike you as odd, as being a goalie requires a certain recklessness, and 57-year-olds are generally of the less-than-reckless persuasion. I, on the other hand, have a suitably reckless belief that a certain amount of falling down, getting kicked, and so on, actually postpones aging.
I first developed this belief eight years ago in an expensive suburban development in Connecticut, thanks to my then-teenage daughter Zoe and a hovercraft.
I had just turned 49, in in my mind it was only a matter of months before I would turn 50, then a few hours later 60, then a few minutes later 70. When I had turned 40, a friend encouragingly sent me a list of all the famous creative people who started their best work after 40. By the time the famous creative people turned 50, though, half of them were dead. At forty, the main danger was male menopause, and deep self-questioning. At fifty, it was cardiac arrest.
This is where the hovercraft comes in. I was writing a magazine piece about hip, extreme modes of personal transportation, and in the development in Connecticut lived a Frenchman whose company was importing from Australia a personal hovercraft which, when he opened his garage door, turned out to look like a cross between a huge overturned Frisbee and a lawnmower.
It was a bright red disk four or five feet across, with a hang-on bar like the pushbar of a walk-behind mower. Mostly, though, it consisted of a fan blowing air downwards, which lifted the disk a couple of inches off the ground, and then you steered by leaning forwards, backwards or sideways, which forced the downward air out sideways and off you went.
The Frenchman shot off up the broad suburban road, round and back to us, then told us it would easily go on grass, too, and he turned toward his broad suburban lawn.
At the edge of the grass, though, the hovercraft stopped sharply, its front end dipped, and the Frenchman somersaulted over the bar, his glasses flying off, and landed flat on his back on the lawn as the engine stuttered and stalled.
I was impressed. Hip modes of transportation are ten a penny, but a middle-aged Frenchman who can make a fool of himself is a rare device. “My turn,” I said.
I had a blast. It didn’t take long to get the knack, as long as you avoided the lawns, and Zoe had a go, too, rather more cautiously, looking like a charioteer riding a very large ladybug.
I had another go, and managed to make the hovercraft turn on a dime. Hah! Zoe had to tear me away.
A few days later Zoe and I went swimming in our local pond. The water was still cold, and Zoe, a much better swimmer than I, hesitated while I dived in.
“Come on!” I said. “I’m in, and I’m an old guy.”
“Yes,” she protested, “but you’re an extreme old guy.”
In a flash, age lost its hold on me. I had found a way to live within time, but not bow down to it.
“Zoe, you’re a genius,” I said. For Christmas, she made me a T-shirt with a picture of the hovercraft and the words EXTREME OLD GUY over my heart.
It doesn’t matter that most people misread it as “extremeLY old guy.” The change is inner, not outer.
When I am an old woman, the poem goes, I shall wear purple. Well, when I am an old man, I shall still be doing extreme and ridiculous stunts, possibly even playing in goal in my local coed soccer league, and if every so often I end up flat on my back, then to hell with the consequences.
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