Edition: U.S. / Global

About Men; Senior-Circuited

BY TOM BROKAW; Tom Brokaw is the anchor for the "NBC Nightly News."
Published: January 6, 1991

A FEW YEARS AGO when a friend turned 50, I took out a full-page ad in a newspaper in the city where he was working. It was merciless, reminding him he was now half a century old, that two-thirds of his lifetime had passed. At the time, I was in my late 40's and yet 50 seemed a distant number, so the fun was entirely at his expense. Ho, ho. Although he seemed to be impressed by my enterprise, he did not share the hilarity.

Now I understand. I am there. Five oh. In fact, I have been for many months, and every day I expect to awake with a sense of adjustment: "Hey, 50 isn't so bad once you get used to it." Trouble is, I haven't. It's not that I am angry or melancholy. It's more an irritation. Sort of a chronic low-level virus. For those of you cruising quietly toward this two-score-and-ten marker be forewarned, as I was not, that 50 is more than 49 plus 1. It brings with it some unexpected and unrelenting conditions.

First, the obvious: at 50 you're no longer young. Oh, an occasional octogenarian will say, "Listen here, young man, when I was your age. . . ." That's comforting if you spend all of your waking hours with octogenarians, but the more realistic standard is set by other experiences. When was the last time you were the youngest person in an office meeting? Or at a dinner party? How many of your college classmates or old girlfriends are grandparents? Have you noticed how many captains of industry, governors, ambassadors are not yet 50?

At 50, you no longer can play the part of the brash young man, making the daring moves secure in the knowledge that if they don't work out, there will probably be other chances. At this age, mistakes, however daring, are not easily excused. Achievement is not a cause of praise; it is expected.

This passage is not eased by the aging of the icons of your generation. Jack Nicklaus, I gather, was not amused when he became eligible to play on the senior golf circuit. It didn't make me very happy, either. If the Golden Bear is a senior, so am I. Worse, I find I am now attracted to golf, a demanding, but let's face it, sedentary sport.

At 50, you begin to examine the passbook of your life with a new urgency. Suddenly, all those casual promissory notes of years gone by are overdue. Oh, migod, I still haven't learned French. Or chess. Or whatever. In my 30's, I was always comforted by the knowledge that James Michener didn't publish his first book until he was 40. Now I realize he'd published four by the time he was 50. Had he lived, John F. Kennedy could have been in the seventh year of his Presidency by the time he was 50.

When we are in our 20's and 30's, life's learning curve is steep but exhilarating. In our 40's, we move into a cruising speed, navigating curves with the comforting knowledge that we've been through most of them before. So doesn't it follow that in the 50's you can switch to autopilot, guided by stored wisdom and maturity, snapping off just the right decision or advice on matters large and small? It's finally time to be a real grown-up. Not true. If I still wore mittens, I'd still lose them.

It comes to you in other ways. Reading E. L. Doctorow's wonderfully evocative "Billy Bathgate," I paused when I came to the passage about the older woman's attraction to the precocious hoodlum. Every young man's fantasy. Then it hit. Not that I'm in the market, but for an older woman to be interested in me she'd have to be 60. If a 60-year-old woman decides to have a fling with a younger man, 50, I would guess, is well above the threshold. For me, this is all theoretical, you understand. I am very happily married to a younger woman. She's 49.

There are other, more subtle reminders that you're moving out of the fast lane. Few of the bench marks of the popular culture reflect the tastes and standards of a 50-year-old. Car, clothing, drink, electronics and travel commercials are the world of twenty or thirtysomething. There are a few exceptions. You could play the father in the Oldsmobile commercial, the one that puts the younger generation in the driver's seat.

It does not help that the latest Geritol commercial features a couple identified as being 50 but looking at least 60. Surely the work of some 20-year-old advertising genius who thinks 50 is just short of death's door, as no doubt I did at that age.

This is not an anxiety borne entirely of perception. There are also the physical realities. At 50, you believe you can still climb Mount McKinley, but then why does your doctor react with an expression of bemused contempt? It's the male equivalent of the biological clock ticking away. A grandfather clock.

A sort of worn look begins to shape memories of my childhood. As a teen-ager, I was fascinated by my mother's high-school yearbook. She graduated in the early 1930's, and yet to my 13-year-old eyes her classmates looked as if they belonged to the 19th century. Children of the 90's looking at my high-school yearbook of the 50's are as separated from that time as I was from the 20's.

A profound change when I crested 49: I had the uneasy feeling I was now looking down a long trail, no longer up. There is the hardening realization of mortality. My father died when he was 69. Nineteen years from my current age. Nineteen years is a long time in jail or a bad marriage, but in life? Our youngest daughter, my baby, was born more than 19 years ago. I am now the age my father was when my wife and I were married. This year, an unsettling number of friends have died or developed terminal illnesses.

At the time of my birthday, this was weighing on me some as I contemplated a celebration with friends of roughly the same age. When I shared with our eldest daughter some of my anxieties, she had the rejoinder of a 24-year-old. "Oh, Dad," she said, "lighten up. Have a good time at your party. After all, this is your generation. You all came into the world at about the same time and you'll check out at about the same time, so enjoy each other now." It was an oddly comforting thought.

If all this has the ring of morbidity, I have sent an errant signal. I am the eternal optimist, always scouting the next adventure. My life is full beyond the wildest hopes of my youth. Marriage, family, friends, health, profession and experiences, whatever the measurement, I am richly endowed and appreciative. In fact, life has been so rewarding I may have been lulled into believing the most immutable dimension of existence -- the aging process -- would be slowed on my behalf. Obviously it has not. Fifty arrived on schedule and it will depart on schedule. It's only a guess, but when it leaves I think I shall miss it -- for then I will be 51.