by Mel (Mon Aug 10, 2009)
When I was younger I was categorical about many things. The Berlin Wall? Nah, that's never coming down. A black president in the US? Oh please. Men and mid-life crises? Well that's just a timeworn cliché.
Ok, so I got the Berlin Wall and the Obama thing wrong. And then the male mid-life crisis came to my house. If I crane my neck and look out of the window, I can see it. British racing green, wire spoke wheels and only two seats. Practical for a family of six. Now whether I graciously said ‘You deserve it darling, you've worked hard for years' or whether I hissed, ‘Will you grow up? We have a mortgage to pay and children to put through University' is neither here nor there. The fact is, I got off lightly.
Over the last few years I have seen my fair share of broken wives hiding behind sunglasses on the school run. Wives trying to make sense of the husband who has been playing away. The husband who swapped his moleskins and polo neck for combats and a hoodie faster than you can say, ‘Yep, he's moved in with a twenty year old popsy'.
I don't understand the click that happens in some men's heads. Men that have taken sons to football and cheered for daughters on Sports Day. Men who worked to pay off their home loan and invest, only to watch the judge give half of it away in the divorce court. I can understand that they find a surgically-enhanced bit of fluff attractive, or that their daughter's best friend's Mum is a very nice woman, but why risk everything and trash your family unit?
I don't think that women are immune to that restless, mid-life feeling, but I think we channel it differently. Going back to study is a common one. I am full of admiration for my friends who either work, or stay at home, but who then sit down at 9pm to write an assignment that's due in next week. Or those women who stretch themselves physically, perhaps hiking in the Himalayas to raise funds for a hospice, or taking up long distance running. I've watched (appalled) as friends drag themselves out of bed at silly o'clock, pounding the pavements to try and do that marathon in sub four hours. I have another friend who walked for 50 km, and raised £50,000 for a worthy cause. Big respec' to them all and may they forever be free of osteoporosis. To date, none of my friends has shacked up with a teenager or bet the farm on a DB9, but maybe I move in the wrong circles.
In my youth, I might have declaimed that the mid-life crisis would never happen to me. But given my Berlin Wall/Obama slip up, I've been giving it some thought. What exactly will my mid-life crisis look like? For a start, it won't be destructive. Having spent years working, raising children and staying in a relationship, what would be the point of blowing it out of the water? So no extra-marital malarkey, and no deserting my family. It will have to be quite low-key.
Here's how I think it will go. I'm going to buy a van, and pay someone to give it a paint job à la Scooby Doo; my very own Mystery Machine. Then I shall drive it around with pride, ignoring the cringeing of my children, and the agonised scowl of my husband. It will be a chance for me to re-live my youth when I used to drive a car with 'DENNIS' sprayed over the bonnet (‘Dennis the Datsun' get it?) It had brightly coloured flowers over the roof and sides, and my name scrawled on the door. I felt unique and happy in that car. It was a car for someone young.
And isn't that what mid-life crises are all about? Wanting to feel young, unique and excited about life all over again? I hope the mid-lifemobile is going to do it for me, although somehow it doesn't seem enough. You know what else I might do? Buy me a body like Daphne. Big pert boobs, a nip-tucked waist, glossy, expensive hair and a purple designer dress.
Although maybe not. Imagine the tragic mid-life males that I might attract.
