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Dave Barry Turns Forty - Softcover

Barry, Dave

 
9780449905876: Dave Barry Turns Forty
Softcover
ISBN 10: 044990587X ISBN 13: 9780449905876
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 1991

Inhaltsangabe

"Just the ticket for the '90s."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
If you're too young for a nursing home yet too old to be a rock star, if your marriage is as exciting as scraping grass off the lawnmower blades, then this hilarious book by Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist and author is for you. Put on your protective eyewear and take a probing look inside your increasingly Spam-like body at: The Midlife (Yawn) Marriage; Wise Financial Planning for Irresponsible Scum Such as Yourself; Sex After 40 (or, Sex? After 40?), and other harsh, but amusing realities that leave you laughing, crying and drooling.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

From 1983 to 2004, Dave Barry wrote a weekly humor column for The Miami Herald, which in 1988 won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. He is the author of more than thirty books, including such bestsellers as the nonfiction Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer Is Much Faster), You Can Date Boys When You're Forty, and I'll Mature When I'm Dead; the novels Big Trouble, Tricky Business, and Insane City; the very successful YA Peter Pan novels (with Ridley Pearson); and his Christmas story The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog. Two of his books—Big Trouble and Dave Barry's Guide to Guys—have been turned into movies. For a while, his life was even a television series, Dave's World, but then it was canceled. The series. Not the life. For many years, Dave was also a guitarist with the late, infamous, and strangely unlamented band the Rock Bottom Remainders.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"Just the ticket for the '90s."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
If you're too young for a nursing home yet too old to be a rock star, if your marriage is as exciting as scraping grass off the lawnmower blades, then this hilarious book by Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist and author is for you. Put on your protective eyewear and take a probing look inside your increasingly Spam-like body at: The Midlife (Yawn) Marriage; Wise Financial Planning for Irresponsible Scum Such as Yourself; Sex After 40 (or, Sex? After 40?), and other harsh, but amusing realities that leave you laughing, crying and drooling.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

INTRODUCTION
 
            Well, it’s finally happening. I’m talking about the long-predicted Aging Process. I see many signs of it in my own life. For example, I have become tremendously concerned about my gums. There was a time when I could go for decades without thinking about my gums, but recently they have come to loom far larger in my mind than the Greenhouse Effect.
 
Also, young people I meet keep using the word “Mister,” causing me to whirl around and look behind me, expecting to see somebody with whom I associate this title, such as the Pope or Walter Cronkite, only to realize that these young people are talking to me.
 
Also, if I attempt to throw a softball without carefully warming up, I have to wait until approximately the next presidential administration before I can attempt to do this again.
 
Also, I have long, animated conversations with my friends—friends with whom I used to ingest banned substances and swim naked—on the importance of dietary fiber.
 
Also, I find myself asking my son, in a solemn parental voice, the same profoundly stupid old-fogey questions that my parents used to ask me, such as: “Do you want to poke somebody’s eye out?”
 
Also—this is most terrifying—I sometimes catch myself humming along to elevator music.
 
Of course I’m not alone. Growing older is a Major Lifestyle Trend, potentially even bigger than cable television. Millions of us, the entire legendary Baby Boom herd of Mouseketeer-watching, Hula-Hoop-spinning, Beatles-admiring, hair-growing, pot-smoking, funky-chicken-dancing, lovemaking, resume-writing, career-pursuing, insurance-buying, fitness-obsessing, Lamaze-class-taking, breast-feeding, data-processing, mortgage-paying, Parents’-Night-attending, business-card-exchanging, compact-disc-owning, tooth-flossing individuals, are lunging toward:
 
 MIDDLE AGE
 
Yes. Say it out loud, Boomers: We are MIDDLE-AGED. The time has come for us to stop identifying with Wally and The Beav; we are now a lot closer to Ward and June. Somebody has to be the grownups, and now it’s our turn.
 
The problem is, I’m not sure we’re ready. I’ve been hanging around with people roughly my own age for the bulk of my life, and I frankly do not feel that, as a group, we have acquired the wisdom and maturity needed to run the world, or even necessarily power tools. Many of us, I’m convinced, only look like grownups.
 
For example, I work for a newspaper Sunday magazine whose staff consists mostly of people about my age. If you happened to visit us briefly from the outside world, we’d strike you as being regular middle-aged guys with ties and desks and families and various degrees of hair loss. “Huh!” you’d say. “This is a group of adults charged with putting out a magazine under constant deadline pressure! They must be very responsible!” Then you’d leave, and we’d resume playing chairball, a game we invented one day in the conference room while attempting to hold a conference, in which the players scuttle violently around on rolling chairs, trying to throw a foam-rubber ball through a hoop up on the wall.
 
I don’t mean to suggest that all we do, at the office, is play chairball. Sometimes we throw the Frisbee. Sometimes we practice our juggling. Sometimes we even put out the magazine, but you would never conclude, if you secretly observed us for several weeks, that this was anywhere near our highest priority.
 
And I don’t think it’s just me and my co-workers who do stuff like this. I think the entire Baby Boom generation is having trouble letting go of the idea that it represents The Nation’s Youth and has an inalienable right to be wild and carefree. The whole Iran-contra scandal, in my opinion, basically boiled down to some fortyish guys in the White House basement playing an international top-secret multimillion-dollar version of chairball.
 
This is why I’m alarmed at the prospect of somebody my age getting into the Oval Office. Because I know that if I got in there, I’d probably be okay for the first few days, but then I’d do something to amuse myself, such as order the Marines to invade Cleveland, or issue a proclamation honoring Nasal Discharge Week, or leave a prank message on the Hot Phone answering machine (“Thanks for calling the White House. We can’t recall our bombers right now, but if you leave your name and the time you called …”).
 
But the alarming truth is, people my age are taking over the government, along with almost everything else. And what is even more terrifying, I’m seeing more and more important jobs being done by people who are even younger than I am. The scariest example is doctors. If you wake up from a terrible accident to find yourself strapped down on your back in an operating room awaiting emergency surgery, and a person walks in who is about to open you up with a sharp implement and root around among your personal organs, you want this person to look as much as possible like Robert Young, right? Well, today the odds are that you’re going to look up and see Sean Penn.
 
And let’s talk about airline pilots. I have long felt that if I’m going to risk my life and valuable carry-on belongings in a profoundly heavy machine going absurdly fast way the hell up in the air over places such as Arkansas, where I don’t even know anybody, then I want whoever is operating this machine to be much older and more mature than I. But now I routinely get on planes where the entire flight crew looks like it’s raising money for its Class Trip. I am very nervous on these flights. I want the crew to leave the cockpit door open so I can make sure they’re not using the navigational computer to play Death Blasters from Planet Doom.
 
I’m not suggesting that anything can be done about this trend. I mean, we can’t pass a law requiring, for example, that airline pilots always have to be older than we are. That could become a real problem once we started reaching, say, our eighties (“This is your captain, and my name is, um … it’s … my name is right on the tip of my tongue …”).
 
No, the only solution is for us to face up to the fact that we are no longer the Hope for the Future. The Hope for the Future now consists of the kids who like to shave their heads and ride skateboards off the tops of buildings. We Baby Boomers are the Hope for Right Now, and we’re going to have to accept it.
 
Which is why I wrote this book. My goal is to explore all the ramifications—physiological, emotional, and social—of turning 40, in hopes that, by improving our understanding and awareness of the true significance of this challenging and extremely important new phase in our lives, we will acquire, as countless generations have acquired before us, the wisdom, vision, and maturity we need to assume our rightful responsibilities and obligations as the moral, intellectual, political, and spiritual leaders—and, yes, caretakers—of this increasingly fragile planet.
 
Then let’s drink a bunch of beer and set off fireworks.
 
 
Excerpt From: Dave Barry. “Dave Barry Turns 40.” iBooks. 1 Are You a Grownup Yet? A Scientific Quiz
 
This quiz is designed to help you get a handle on how far you have progressed toward becoming a grownup, as measured by the Standardized Psychological Maturity Scale, which assesses your maturity level on a scale...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
1991
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
044990587X
ISBN 13 
9780449905876
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
192
Kontakt zum Hersteller
SC
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/

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