Planning Your Mid-Life Crisis

The other day, an old friend confessed that she was having an affair. She claims this is not her fault because she is in the throes of a mid-life crisis and needs to do something different to bring some excitement into her life. So, she decided to risk everything by cheating on her husband.
I’m jealous. I’ve been waiting years for my mid-life crisis. How is it that a woman who is younger than me gets to have hers before I can have mine?
You see, I have big plans for my mid-life crisis.
Originally, I was going to buy a Corvette, but as I have been getting closer to my highly anticipated crisis, I’ve realized that I won't be able to afford one. So instead, I’m going to take a nap. I’ve been planning it ever since I gave birth.
You never know how fulfilling a nap can be until you go eleven years without one.
Winston Churchill took naps every day during World War II. He was allowed because he had armed bodyguards at his bedroom door. History says that they were there to protect him from the Nazis. If the Churchills were anything like my family, the offspring were a greater threat to his nap time than Adolph Hitler.
No one has ever been hurt by a nap.
Okay, there are those unfortunates who have spontaneously combusted. Of course, I’m not an expert, but I’m sure if anyone is bored enough to research this, they will find that the annual rate of middle-aged people who have died from spontaneous combustion while napping is drastically lower than the rate of families who have been destroyed by infidelity.
The prospect of having an affair is out of the question for me. Yes, I love my husband too much to want to cheat on him. But, I confess that even if that were not the case, I have another reason for not cheating: I don’t have the time or energy to take on a lover.
I spend every waking hour catering to the needs of spousal units, kids, school teachers, parents, and don’t forget the pets. Why would I want to insert another person into my life and schedule?
An affair requires work.
I’d have to style my hair every day. I’d have to update my make-up from the 1980’s. I’d have to start wearing scents other than coffee.
I love Victoria’s Secret, but my taste in lingerie has shifted from slinky to flannel cotton. I can’t stand to wear anything to bed that doesn’t cover me from head to toe to keep the draft out when Jack steals the covers.
I’d have to shave my legs, which at this point in my life, I only do on the most special of occasions, like visits from heads of state. At the very least, I’ll have to buy a pair of panty hose. Then, I’d have to squeeze into them.
I’d probably have to get a girdle, too. I keep having visions of my lover ending up in the emergency room after having his eye poked out by flying shrapnel as a result of the exploding flesh when I release it from my garments of bondage. Try explaining that to your homeowners insurance.
I haven’t even mentioned the sneaking around. By the time it gets dark enough for a hotel clerk to not obtain a good enough look at me and my lover to give a detailed description to the PI working for the divorce lawyer, I’m falling asleep in front of iCarly. After cleaning up the kitchen in the evening, not even the lastest James Bond can entice me out of my Spongebob Squarepants slippers for a romantic rendezvous.
Naps don’t make these types of demands. All they require is a good lock on your bedroom door (or armed guards if you can convince the feds that there's a threat to your life), a pillow, a nice warm blanket, and thick curtains to block out the sunlight. Don’t forget to turn off your cell phone!
The sheets don’t care if your legs are unshaven. The mattress doesn’t notice if you’ve put on a few pounds. If it does, it won’t say anything to hurt your feelings. No cosmetics, perfumes, or dress codes required.
If your husband finds out about what you’ve done, his hurt won’t be due to a betrayal, but jealousy because you neglected to invite him to join you. Next time, pull back the covers and tell him that he can jump in as long as he promises to keep quiet and not tell anyone what the two of you are doing. All will be forgiven (unless he finds evidence that you had been eating potato chips in bed again) and life will go on as before without any need for a marriage counselor (unless you were eating those potato chips on his side of the bed).
If infidelity is exciting, I’d rather be boring. Train wrecks are exciting, too; but I still avoid them.
Over the years, marriages go through stages. If you're lucky, your marriage will reach the stage that those less enlightened would describe as boring. You have made it through the unsettling years of adjusting to each other. The wars over which way to hang the toilet paper (inside or out) and where does the peanut butter go (refrigerator or cupboard) have been fought. Victories have been declared and treaties have been written.
With not so many battles to fight, marriage reaches a harmonic stage, which can be mistaken for boring. Let me illustrate:
My grandparents were married for over seventy years. Every evening, while the sun would set on our little town, they would sit in their rockers on the front porch to watch the coming and goings along their street. Long stretches of quiet would be punctuated by something like, “Hey, Pap, did you see that? Bud got himself a new pick-up.”
My grandfather would stop rocking, lower his newspaper, and peer out the window in the direction his wife would be pointing. “He must be making good money at the mill. Last week, I saw him at the bank. She was making roast beef for dinner.”
“My! Do you know how expensive beef is nowadays?” Then, Grandma would go on about her last trip to the butcher and how she swore he had put his thumb on the scale.
When I was a teenager dreaming of life as a best selling author traveling the world, I wondered at how dull their lives were and asked myself (and probably them since I had a big mouth), how they could stand living such an uninteresting existence.
Now, thirty years later, as I write this, I sit in front of the fireplace with my husband who is reading yet another deep book about how these are the end times and feel a sense of calm that I would never want to replace with anything…except maybe a mid-afternoon nap.
Someday, my mid-life crisis will come.