I’m wearing half a century of age rather happily and comfortably these days. . . especially this afternoon when I actually managed to beat Dave Krueger 6-4 in what will likely be our last tennis match of the year (unless Mother Nature has a very odd December up her sleeve.) But for every instance that makes me feel like I’m still in my prime, two or three things will happen that make me feel ANCIENT…. like Friday morning, when I had a few minutes of unexpected free time and decided to go online and watch the latest episode of “Smallville.” This is television’s latest treatment of the Superman saga and I used to watch the show rather faithfully, but hadn’t seen a complete episode in at least a couple of years. I had read that Teri Hatcher (who played Lois Lane in a previous series) was a special guest star on this episode, which got me curious enough to check it out. And I’m glad I did…. until it was time to take a little online survey. And the last of the ten questions is what you see pictured above. . . What is your age? Under 13? 13-17? 18-24? 25-34? 35-49? 50+?
It was incredibly dispiriting to find myself having to check the last of the choices, and to realize that the kind folks of the CW network have me grouped together age-wise with my 78-year-old father, my 88-year-old choral music mentor, Weston Noble, and my 96-year-old music teacher friend Henrietta Welch. Under any other circumstances, I would be honored to be in their company- but it’s hard not to take this a a kick in the solar plexus. Of course, we’re talking about a television show about superheroes …. and about watching said show on the internet, so it makes sense for the survey’s age groups to skew younger rather than older. Still, seeing those words 50+ nearly made me break out in spontaneous liver spots, especially because it reminded me that the whole entertainment industry is so much more interested in young and impressionable viewers and listeners rather than the grizzled and gray.
On the other hand, Kathy and I spent Saturday evening with Marshall watching the latest Harry Potter movie…. and although the most rabid fans of that franchise tend to be decades younger than us, we were by no means the only 40-50 year-olds in the theater. And it occurs to me only as I write these words that one of the neatest things about the whole Harry Potter phenomenon is how it has managed to cast a spell over people of all ages. Let’s hear it for anything that blurs the barriers between young and old and makes an old geezer like me feel like a spring chicken.