My Pathetic Mid-Life Crisis

I am, as of this writing, 41 years old. Been married 17 years, have two kids, job I can't stand. You know the drill.

Normally, a guy my age would look around at what he has, or has not, wrought, and decide to get either a sportscar, a young girlfriend, or both. Well, I don't have the money for a sportscar. This fact sort of led to the crisis in the first place, didn't it? I mean, if I could afford a sportscar, perhaps I wouldn't be having a mid-life crisis at all. As for the young girlfriend, I have no interest. I'm quite in love with my wife, thankyouverymuch. And even if I wasn't, I don't have the time or patience any more for dating. Between sneaking around trying to find a hotel where I can park in the back, and sitting at home watching "Parking Wars," I'll take the couch almost every time.

So how is my crisis playing out, exactly? Well, I play a lot of games and read a lot of comics. But really, I've done all those things most of my life, so that's not really a change for me. It takes a little more explanation when people ask what the little superheroes around my monitor at work are for, but I've never had a complex about it so it doesn't really bother me. And comics really aren't geared for children any more. Most of my friends read comics, and they're all adults as well. No, the only crisis I see here is the one on Infinite Earths.

The single manifestation of my vaunted Mid-Life Crisis is the weeping. Every time I watch, or read, something from my childhood, I tear up. The other night, we were watching the classic "Year Without a Santa Claus." Predictably, my eyes welled up during the song "I Believe in Santa Claus." I've noticed that I cry a lot these days when confronted with anything that reminds my of my youth. Now that I spend much of my time stressing about money, or job, or my teenager, or my health, or the various deaths in the family in recent years, I think that I long for a simpler time. A time when my greatest concern was getting my homework done, and my greatest fear was of the Bumble. I cry because those days are long gone, and I know they're never coming back, and I realize that they won't last forever for my children, either. Granted, these are not unpleasant memories I'm dredging up. On the contrary, I love reliving those days. There's happiness there, too. But also sadness. Sadness for the passing of those days when the light at the end of the tunnel didn't seem quite so distant.