After cashing my paycheck for the week, I usually top off the car's gas tank at a nearby filling station. More often than not, the man behind the counter is a quiet Indian gentleman who doesn't say much beyond hello.
Earlier this month, I pulled into this station as usual. “15 dollars on pump 5. Regular,” I said to the man behind the counter who again, didn't say much. I then walked back to the car and started to fill the gas tank but in the corner of my eye was a figure standing next to me. It was the quiet gentleman from behind the counter. He told me that I always smelled good, dressed nice and was very handsome so he wondered if I had a girlfriend. I reluctantly answered, “No.” He then asked, “So no wife? No children?” Again, I answered no adding that this town tended to attract people who were already married and that made things difficult for the singles who lived here. He then said I should join a gym because there were many attractive women there. They hit on him all the time but he had to tell them he was married. Out of politeness, I asked what gym he went to. After he told me, we wrapped up our conversation and he went back inside. I found the entire experience to be incredibly awkward.
Later that day, I told a few acquaintances about this incident and they didn't think much of it. “He was just looking out for you,” said one of them. Another wondered if he had a daughter and was trying to set her up with me. Despite these explanations, it still felt wrong on so many levels. Someone I hardly knew got very personal very fast. What was it about me that made him drop what he was doing to chat about my (lack-of-a) relationship status? I guess the only silver lining in all of this was the fact that he was married and didn't appear to be hitting on me.
I started to think about all the times I've been complimented on my looks from total strangers. The largest offenders by far have been elderly women. Since dressing nice seems to be a lost art in this slob culture, I guess my fashion sense must be a refreshing sight to them. But it crosses a line when they say things like, “If I was only 30 years younger.” This is not something a dateless wonder like me wants to hear!
As far back as my late teens, I remember hearing these compliments from older people as I struggled to find a girlfriend. All throughout high school and college, I seemed to fly under the radar of women my own age and in the years since, I've never had any of them pick me out of a crowd to chat or praise my fashion sense. In fact, women my age never seem to give any hint they find me interesting at all. The signals they do send range from cold indifference to mildly annoyed.
During a recent discussion on a Catholic dating chat room, I explained my chronic bad luck at finding a date. A divorced woman who was ten years older than me thought I was being too hard on myself and wondered if I suffered from low self-esteem. I told her it wasn't low self-esteem. It was reality. There was something about me that didn't catch the eye of women my own age. She questioned this and said I had classic good looks. If that was the case then what the heck was wrong with women my own age? Were they blind or did they only like musclebound jocks? Maybe they feared most men. Perhaps their expectations were so high, they routinely overlooked the decent guys who stood right in front of them? Elsewhere in this chat room some of the women talked about how sexy it was to see a guy in a suit and tie and then they lamented all the profiles with poorly dressed men. Well, my profile picture featured a nicely coordinated suit and tie combination. Maybe women my age don't know what they want.
I may not be the hunkiest guy in the world, but people have given me far too many compliments to believe that I'm repulsive. Recently, a couple of new co-workers were amazed when they found out how old I really was because they said I looked much younger. So why is it that I run into these very different perspectives?
Frankly, I think a lot of women in this part of the country tend to be stuck up. They pine for boyfriends but have no trouble shooting men down who dare try starting a conversation with them. Then when they're old and have “lost their looks” they have no trouble being flirtatious because any attention from a handsome younger guy is welcome since it's been so long since they've been thought of as sexy.
One thing is for sure, it's a sad thing when you have total strangers coming out of the woodwork to pay you a compliment but no woman your own age will do the same.
One of my teachers in middle school named Mr. Anderson told us a person's age had a big influence on our behavior. To illustrate this point, he said that if he decided to sit with us in the cafeteria the things we would talk about would be very different from the topics we usually discussed during lunch with our friends. I'm not sure how obsessed Mr. Anderson was with TV shows like The Transformers and Inspector Gadget but he was probably correct.
While having older friends and acquaintances can teach young people valuable lessons, it's important for them to be with their own kind too. In high school, there weren't many of my fellow students to hang out with but the elderly seemed to be everywhere. Gray-haired parishioners filled the pews during Mass and significant number of employees and customers at the small grocery store I worked for were old as well. I got along with some of them but the topics of conversation they brought up were very different from the concerns that were foremost on my mind. While I worried about fitting in and getting a date for the junior prom, they complained about every little ache and pain. If I was feeling sad from being bullied, they would simply say, “Smile. It can't be that bad.” To the young person who can't seem to find where he belongs in the world, it can be that bad. Then of course, I was constantly reminded how life was so much better back in their day.
Soon these people invaded my thoughts. I feared growing old and thought about death on a daily basis. I imagined a world 100 years from now with a student looking at distant images of our generation on a page in a history book. These thoughts weren't very natural for a teenager and it made my young life feel very tiresome. I'm not saying young people should live their days with carefree abandon but there needs to be balance. A teen's sense of his own mortality should make him appreciate life instead of dreading it.
Unfortunately, being surrounded by old people has continued to plague me all these years later. I could be sitting by myself at the library and an elderly woman will plunk herself down right next to me. At Mass, no person my age ever occupies the nearby pews. The friendships and acquaintances I do have with the elderly tend to be very one-sided. They get to discuss the movies, television shows and music they grew up with but God forbid I share anything from my generation. In fact, there is a whole list of “safe” and “unsafe” topics swirling around in my mind.
One septuagenarian friend named Richard has been growing increasingly grumpy despite a comfortable retirement and happy marriage. No matter the subject, he always seems to find a way to bring people down. In an e-mail on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, he started off by saying what a wonderful achievement it was. He then mentioned how the event briefly united the world. His commentary quickly went south: “I can't believe it's been a half century since that night. I'm 78 now and I'm disappointed that after a few more moon landings, we just quit. I expected by now that there would be a permanent base on the moon. But no, just some footprints and abandoned equipment. What a waste.”
Richard also sent a fascinating Youtube video of New York street scenes from 1911. He wrote: “Every single person and horse in this film have long since passed away. They were here, like we are, and had their moment in the sun. Captured on film, they will live on, unknown, for as long as the film images last. We now are having our moment in the sun, and 108 years from now we, like them, will be long gone.” Hmm. Do I need any more reminders of how short life is?
Over the years, I learned to put up with Richard's curmudgeonly commentary but recently, it got too personal. As he was waiting in a mutual friend's pickup tuck, Richard saw me walking along in the distance and said to everyone that I would never get married. I blew my chance at finding a wife in college and now I spent too much time being a mamma's boy. He added that I dressed like someone out of the 1956 Sears catalog and needed to get with the times. When I learned about his hurtful rant, I said nothing to him but decided to keep my distance from now on. Over the years, I had sacrificed a lot to maintain a friendship with Richard. Now he was throwing me under the bus for a good laugh. If this didn't underscore the importance of having caring relationships with people your own age, nothing else did.
