Conclusions

At times in my life, I've managed to reach a few conclusions about myself. I'm 44 years old, and at that age, you just realize certain things about yourself. Among the observations that I've made recently:

• I'm never going to get a tattoo. So many of my students have been permanently inked, and they're barely 20 years old. I look at their new tattoos and listen to them talk about how they love getting their bodies altered, and I realize that this just isn't for me. I do find them somewhat intriguing on other people, but even then, it's not a particular turn-on.
• Likewise, I'm never going to get anything pierced. Maybe I'm just too vanilla; perhaps that's the realization I should be having. I don't know. I just don't feel as if I'm missing any holes in my body at this point. I know one student who has a ladder of piercings up her neck. Others have noses and lips and eyebrows and god-only-knows-what-else pierced. Perhaps these are the province of the young only, but then I didn't particularly want to be pierced when I was younger either.
• I'm never going to work at a research university, teaching only a couple of classes a year and devoting the rest of my time to writing academic books with the hope of receiving tenure. At one point, when I was still taking classes in graduate school, that was the dream. Now I think I'd much rather teach a lot of people, try my best to help as many students as possible become better writers. I don't think I'll ever desire the solitary life of the academic, devoting hours and hours to the writing of critical essays and collections of my thoughts to put on the bookshelves of libraries everywhere to collect dust.
• I'm never going to get my hair back. The pelt is slowly vanishing. I miss it already. I've tried some products (some ointments and so forth--such a strange word, "ointment"), but nothing really works. I'm too blase about my hair loss to get plugs or transplants or whatever terminology is in vogue these days. At some point, I guess it's going to necessitate shaving off what's left of my hair. I used to have such thick hair. Those days are long gone now. Even though my hair never "did" anything except hang there or stick out at the wrong places, I would love to have it all back again the way it was 10 years ago.
• I'm never going to become a manager or administrator. I see friends of mine who are, and they seem to be rather unhappy people. They have so much stress in their lives, and they seem forever overwhelmed by bureaucratic detail. And they must deal with some of the most disagreeable people. At least with teaching I can see individual or group progress, and some of the students are grateful or even happy. I'm not sure managers or administrators ever see that.
• I'm never moving back to Mississippi or Alabama. I can barely stand to spend more than two or three days there at Thanksgiving. In fact, it's been several years now since I've gone home for Thanksgiving. I do miss some of the people there, and I do still have family there. But I have no desire to be there permanently myself. My heart truly is in and with Los Angeles. Who knew that a guy who was born in the country of northeast Mississippi would grow up to realize that he's truly a "city boy"?
• I'm never going to have a 28-inch waist again. I like to eat, but I don't particularly care to exercise. I have a waistline of about 35 inches these days. I never thought that was particularly fat, but I do live in the Los Angeles area. That means that I'm "California fat" to people here--or "skinny fat," as they say on Rick and Steve. I suppose if the workload ever permits, I'll get back to going to the gym and running and all of the other things I used to have time to do. Maybe I could shed a few pounds that way, but it's never going to be 28 inches again. I suppose it's not possible to return to one's college weight easily these days (unless you've been steadily working on it since college, and I haven't).

I'm sure as I get older, I'll come to even more realizations. A friend and I discussed recently how every decade seems to bring a new set of surprises. When you turn 20, you start to realize things about yourself, ways that you are vastly different from when you were a teenager. At 30, you have new revelations that you couldn't have anticipated in your 20s, a truer sense of maturity. And now after having passed 40, I've gotten to the seven listed above. Undoubtedly, there are more to follow. Stay tuned.