Mid-life crisis fast approaching
Upon reaching middle age it’s not uncommon for men to get bit of a wishlist going.
A list full of things they feel that middle age should have in store for them.
And we’re not talking about haemorrhoids and heart disease.
No it’s more along the lines of sports cars, motorbikes and an adventurous life.
The sports car is relatively obtainable unless its late model and European. And tired second Japanese drop tops are really only on the ‘‘is that really all there is in my budget’’ list.
And then the kids have to be off your hands since a roomy back seat that will take a child restraint isn’t really in the design brief of most rocketship two doors.
But after a good number of years being dictated to by safety ratings and fuel economy this is not a purchase guided by the head.
Similarly the decision to buy a motorbike is not based on whether or not the seat is plush and the handlebars will give you tendonitis.
This is guided by the tiny primal part of our brain that we inherited from the dinosaurs, most likely T-Rex. It just has to big and loud. And fast.
Wildly impractical since you can’t take the kids, you can’t take the wife and even if you could she can’t fit more than one pair of shoes.
An adventurous life is much harder to quantify. Of course by now you have been truly broken in and so conditioned to believe that throwing caution to the wind means wearing mismatched socks to work or not taking your gout medication. Or the heady rush of sending down a drive at lawn bowls.
But this is wind in the hair freedom. Parachuting, hangliding, rock climbing, whitewater rafting, climbing Mt Everest.
This is the stuff of legend. It has also been known to end badly but after a lifetime of keeping inside the lines who could blame a bloke for craving the copper taste of raw fear and living to tell the tale over a cold beer.
At this point I have to accept that I am no closer to owning a Bugatti Veyron, two-wheeled hellhound or swimming Cook Strait than I am to growing a third ear.
I could always take a leaf out a mate’s book who just bought a drum kit.
Even if he never really learns to play at least he can belt seven bells out of it and then work out a few of his people mover, sensible shoes, 50cc frustrations.
Best case scenario he’s the next Keith Moon and rock and roll lunacy beckons. But that’s a fresh crisis right there.