Change schmange – the status quo isn’t that bad

Society hasn’t attached any significance to turning 51. It’s no milestone. You’ve made the half century thing yesterday’s news, and no one expects you to run off with a 20-year-old in a Ferrari convertible, quit your job to pursue your origami passion, or return to university to study Anglo Saxon poetry.

If any of that were going to happen, the deadline has past. Emotional balance has returned. As you were, birthday boy.

Assuming you survived the 50 designation with most of your brain cells and assets intact, things are just going to, you know, carry on.

So I turned 51 in August. And now, a few months in, I’ve decided to honour my own private status quo by reiterating the things I have no desire to change.

At 51, I’ve decided I’m going to keep on saying thank you to people who merely do what they’re supposed to do or what they’re paid to do. “Thank you,” I’ll say when I leave the coffee shop. “Thank you,” I’ll say to the officious clerk at the Motor Vehicles Branch.

And “thank you” I’ll say to the bus driver when she gets me to my stop in one piece. After all, dealing with rude, unreasonable and unlawful people is all in a day’s work for a bus driver. It must be nice to get a thank you now and again.

I am also going to continue to make time for babies, puppies and kittens. Pure, unapologetic energy is hard to find. But not when our young friends are around.

I’m also going to continue to make time for all sorts of grown-up people. Old people, young people, strangers in the elevator, the special needs guy who packs my groceries.

The grocery guy is always in a great mood and has a story. His parents are taking him on a trip to the U.S., his first time ever. He’s moving into a new apartment. He’s going to the football game.

He’s having a fantastic day, no matter what the weather is like or how busy the till is, and he always reminds me to get the most from simple pleasures.

At 51, I am going to continue lightening the mood whenever I get the chance. The sad truth about life is that we end up spending much of our day taking things very seriously –even though we’d rather be doing something else and with different people. The least we can do is find some humour in it.

At 51, I am going to continue leaving hotel and motel rooms with those little bottles of shampoo and body lotion in my possession. It seems to me I pay enough for a room that I deserve a small token of the establishment’s appreciation.

If the establishment doesn’t appreciate me, oh well. At least my skin won’t be cracking.

At 51, this is pretty well it for my hair. They’re all bad hair days, now, and I’m OK with that. I’m not going to dye it, spike it, shave it all off or thicken it with plugs.

My hair is what my hair is. Whether I’m climbing out of the pool, rolling out of bed or whizzing down the road in a roofless Ferrari.

Which I don’t own, by the way.

George Lee lives, writes and edits in Edmonton, where only the bad stuff changes. Reach him at piecesofgeorge@featureswest.com.