An Incomplete and Growing List of Stuff That Happened When I Turned 40

I turned 40 last month, and I’m not going to lie, it felt a little weird.

I never really felt old in my 30s, but 40 hit different. It’s a milestone of sorts. This is 40, The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

It might also be because I was old enough to remember when my dad turned 40. His sister, my Aunt Sue, got him a signed picture of ’50s TV hostess Sally Starr and a coffee mug that read 40: Over The Hill.

Over the hill.

That old term that playfully hints at the mortality that awaits you at the bottom. As in, your life is basically halfway over. This is as good as it gets, dude. It’s all downhill from here.

I recounted all of this to my dad when he sent me a birthday text. “Ahh hell,” he said. “You’ll finally just say ‘fuck it.’ Just doesn’t matter. Stay healthy and fit and you’ll laugh at your fat ass old friends. Very satisfying.”

“I hope that’s the case,” I said.

“Also, you should schedule a colonoscopy.”

—

40 does matter, though. I mean, it’s not like I woke up and was suddenly a different person, but once the calendar page turned, all of those subtle shifts in my life became quite apparent.

As such, I present to you my incomplete and growing list of stuff that happened when I turned 40:

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The Weather Became Important

I’d say I check the weather no less than 15 times a day. I do this in various forms: pulling up the weather app on my phone, asking Alexa in whatever room I happen to be in. I have a weather widget on my desktop staring at me for the 8 hours I’m at work. Because when you’re sitting in a cubicle surrounded by 40 other cubicles in an interior room on the fifth floor of an office building where the nearest window is a field goal kick away, knowing the outside temperature is CRITICAL.

I think I care so much because the weather has become a measurement of my mood. If it’s warm and sunny, I know the feelings of unrelenting doom will be easier to push away. Cloudy, rainy, gloomy, cold? I’m in for a long day of Purgatory.

Now the dopamine I get from knowing the weather has ingrained a trigger behavior in me. Whenever I’m feeling bored or anxious, I check the weather to see if I have something to feel good about. It’s like a slot machine–I pull up the app and never know if I’m going to be pleasanttly surprised or disappointed.

Only sometimes I can’t get the information I seek, and I start to get the itch.

This is what happened on Thursday night at the restaurant when I was talking to my wife, Melinda. We were making plans for the weekend, and because the weather is a critical component of making any future plans, I went to check out the five day forecast.

Only I wasn’t getting enough service to pull the most recent weather data, and a blank gray widget stared back at me.

I played it off the first time, thinking it was no big deal, that I could still make cursory weekend plans without knowing the chance of precipitation. But as our conversation continued, the uncertainty gnawed at me.

Several times while Melinda and I talked about a variety of other, non-weather dependent subjects, I pulled out my phone to see if I had gotten more signal. No joy. My service continued to hover at one bar.

“What’s wrong?” Melinda asked. “Why do you keep checking your phone?”

“I HAVE TO KNOW THE WEATHER.”

—

Pro Athletes are Younger Than Me

When did NFL players become CHILDREN?

It happened so fast. One day I was looking up to these stars, wishing they’d toss their jersey to me like Mean Joe Green in that Coke commercial. The next, I was looking up their ages in disbelief.

Alexa, how old is Jalen Hurts?

Jalen Hurts is 26 years old, and was born on August 7, 1998.

Fucking Christ. I had touched a boob by the time that dude was born. Over the shirt, but still. It makes me feel guilty calling him a fuckstick when he throws (another) dumbass interception. Like, of course he’s a fuckstick. At 26, I was too.

What’s worse is that the players I remember from being a kid are now doing commercials for old people. During Thursday Night Football, I saw Emmitt Smith in a Depends commercial. The guy ran for over 18,000 yards in his career, and now he’s hawking piss pants.

You know the only player who’s not a child? Aaron Rodgers. He’s 40. And also the oldest player in the league.

—

I Developed a Skincare Regimen

Every night before bed, Melinda does what she calls her “night time things.” I’m not exactly sure what it entails, if I’m being honest. I just know she takes a bunch of tubes and jars out of her medicine cabinet and slathers stuff on her face.

“Why do you do all that?” I once asked.

“So that I can be pretty,” she said.

“But I don’t do any of that stuff. Am I not pretty?”

There was a long pause.

“Am I not pretty?” I repeated.

“Sure honey,” she said. “You’re pretty.”

I was content with her assertion until I took a recent trip to the dermatologist. I had some kind of deposit under my eye that looked gross, and I wanted him to look at it.

After he sliced it with a scalpel and squeezed out its contents, he asked what kind of skincare routine I had.

“Um, none?” I said.

“Well, do you wash your face?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course.”

“What do you use?”

I tried to picture the tube of face wash in my shower. “St. Ives Apricot Scrub?”

He looked at me like I’d run over his cat. “Okay, so stop using that immediately.”

I’ve been using that scrub for 20 years. I order it in bulk from Amazon. And apparently, it’s not good for my face.

“Of course it’s not,” Melinda said when I told her what the doctor said. “It’s like liquid sandpaper. You’re ripping your face open every time you get in the shower.”

“But I like that it hurts!” I said. “That way I know it’s working!”

Instead, Melinda gave me a bunch of stuff from her medicine cabinet of mystery that I was supposed to use. Then the next day she took me to Target and bought me a bunch of other stuff I’d never heard of.

So now, we do our night time things together. And I have to say, I don’t feel any prettier.

—

I Just Kind of…Hurt?

All the time?

There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not injured. I’m not broken.

A few months ago my knee started bothering me. I noticed it especially when I went up steps. And since I’d torn my ACL when I was 20, I worried something had happened with it.

So I did the right thing and went to the orthopedist.

My MRI came back clean.

When I asked the doc what he thought might be causing the discomfort, he looked up from his iPad.

“Honestly? You’re just getting old.”

Wait, that’s a real fucking diagnosis? Isn’t there some kind of ethical standard of medicine where you can’t just dunk on old people?

The doc continued that if I wanted the pain to go away, I needed to move more, not less.

So that’s what I did. I started getting to my office and using the fitness center before I started my day. Honestly, I hate working out, but once I got into that groove, it wasn’t so bad.

I’d been going consistently for about a month when suddenly the fingers on my left hand started to tingle. I noticed it especially at night when I was lying in bed, when my tricep would throb and my hand felt like it was going to fall asleep.

I laid there, convinced there was an arterial blockage in my arm, and I was getting pins and needles because blood wasn’t flowing properly. Maybe this is what a blood clot feels like? Am I dying?

I slept in fits the rest of the night, convinced I might not wake up.

In the morning I told Melinda about what I’d felt. “You probably pinched a nerve in your arm working out,” she said. “It happens to me all the time.”

“Really?” I said.

“I don’t think you feel a blood clot,” she said. “I think blood clots just go up into your brain and you die.”

“That sounds kind of nice,” I said.