I have exceeded my expectations and achieved mostly everything reasonable that I ever wanted.
First Person
By Al Carlos Hernandez
We live in a society the worships youth, and that is a mistake. Young people think they know everything but actually know very little about what makes a meaningful life. Most twenty-something’s back stroke though an Evian sea of ambivalent entitlement. I remember in my Brown Beret days, the quote by Villa, “What are you doing to defend the conquests for which we gave our lives?” Post-generation X, is text-messaging cat play dates.
I’m very happy to be middle age, honored to have Grand-kids and proud to walk with them at the mall. I can’t really say the same thing about them. Last week, pushing our infant Princesa, a graying African American couple, muttered, “He is too old to be having a baby,” the wife looked over, and muttered “He sure is.” I was invigorated by the possibility, popping my collar, winking at them saying, “Y’all don’t even know”…
This is the best time of my life, I have exceeded my expectations and achieved mostly everything reasonable that I ever wanted and have become the man I always hoped to be but never seemed to get it right or righteous.
I have given up on being cute or even handsome; I am quite satisfied looking distinguished, OG, and or John Gotti-chic. My life has been a brakeless roller coaster ride from one trial after another; Dr. Hunter S. Thomson was right when he said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.” My life’s trajectory has been an exercise in aggressive ignorance, always trying to make it, often times failing only to pick up the gauntlet and trying something even more eclectic the next time. I didn’t realize until quite recently that I was an artist looking for a canvas.
I know now I did a million things wrong in order to teach one thousand things right to a new generation who will probably never be able to buy their own home.
WC Fields said, “Why stand up when you can sit down, why sit down when you can lay down.” And I feel him on that. No longer do I have to scamper around town desperate for entertainment, being seen and making the scene. Facebook has saved me millions of frequent flier miles, I am content in missing major events, and find myself avoiding large gatherings. The general public no longer has manners, and I no longer have the patience to suffer fools well.
I am confident in my flesh, and there seems to be more of it, and so knowledgeable about the law, I find it much easier to tell someone off, make it count, and tell people what I really think, because I’ve reached the point in life when I really don’t care about what people think of me, because I think so well of myself. This is wisdom and maturity, the two pieces of the puzzle of my existence which have been clearly missing.
I am a few pounds overweight, could drop ten pounds and look better, but I feel great. When I had the hard rocked body, lean mean going for the green, suffered sever anxiety problems, my body was always in a clinch, like fist, in fisted rage. My hands are warm and open now to caress the faces that give my life real meaning.
For the first time ever since the advent of the transistor radio back in the Top forty days, have no idea what song are at the top of the charts and could care less, I listen to my own music, by artists who have spoken to my life’s experience, and yes I sing along and play bass lines on my steering wheel, and, as a public service all my cars have dark tinted windows so commuters’ don’t have to see my Carlos Santana Woodstock face, while I play It loud.
I’m doing things that my dear friends who have gone before me would have wanted to me to. I’m still on the hustle doing big things in memory of those who went home early and never had the chance. They would have been proud and we would have laughed together but often times I laugh alone in my heart to myself to inside jokes that only a few would understand.
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” -Kurt Vonnegut