I’m 47 years old now. Hard to believe, I know. Though I still look like a sweet little man-angel—for some reason I’ve got the drum-taut, dew-dappled skin of a pre-teen Swedish boy—it’s official: I am really fucking far away from being young.

But I am not old, of course. I am ripe. I’m mature.

And I’m also immature, too.

A few marginally keen observations: I have this new kind of crepe paper-like skin around my eyes, particularly when I squint. I am horrified when I see it in photographs. Is that Burgess Meredith? I wonder. No, Scott; it’s just you and your newly wrinkled visage. Also: As we learned from Peyton Manning in the last NFL season, all the air suddenly goes out of a man’s body around 38, 39. Once the air’s out, he’s henceforth different. He can’t do the things that he used to be able to do, like throw touchdown passes that look like goddamned rainbows, or move his feet with any sort of speed or grace.

His poops are a little off, too. The mature man starts involuntarily eyeballing the crossword puzzle in the newspaper the same way he used to ogle steaks and women. The mature man wonders if 4 p.m. is too early to eat his dinner, then wonders if 8 p.m. (or, sometimes 7 p.m.) is too early to go to bed.

The mature man wonders sometimes if he did it all wrong; wonders if he missed out on something significant, or, at the very least, semi-significant. He tells himself repeatedly that, of course, he didn’t miss out on anything. Then, like clockwork, he worries about the same exact thing the following day.

Even at my somewhat advanced age, I think, My real life should be starting any minute now. Really starting. This is finally it! Here we go!

I’ve felt this way for decades.

And I still brace myself, fastening my invisible seatbelt and putting my invisible tray table in the upright position. I hold on tight, ticking off the seconds of the countdown: 5…4…3…2… 

But that’s as far as I ever get. I’ve never completed the countdown. The metaphorical rocket ship just rumbles endlessly on the platform.

That’s it.

The result: I am a grown man who still behaves like a teenager. I like candy and ice cream. I hang sci-fi movie posters on my walls. My life is built around impulses, appetites, indulgences.

Sometimes when I get out of the shower in the morning and I’m towelling off my now-mature body and I look into the mirror, what I see is my father’s old, wizened face looking back at me. I always let out a shriek when this happens.

To the people over there, on the other side of the fence? The people with the families and the responsibilities and all that jazz? I always assumed that at some point I’d be joining you, that I’d eventually find my way over to your side of life.

Now I seek out the single and the divorced; the dullards and the damned; the lonely ones. The cat lovers, and the afternoon vacuumers, and the coffee shop loners. You don’t get to be my age without having some weird shit transpire.

We get together and we honour the weird shit.

It’s really not so bad over here, you know….