I found myself sitting across the desk from my banker one day last week. Apparently, PNC had screwed up a bunch of my accounts as they migrated from National City and it was serious enough that the phone support people couldn’t help. They said I had to trudge into the local branch.
Ok, fine. I hadn’t seen Mark since the time one of his tellers had a mild heart attack last year anyway. It was time. When you lose the face time, you lose the relationship.
So, there I was, taking the first five minutes of the meeting seriously as I explained what I needed and how the bank should fix things. And my mind starts to wander all over the place to smart-alec comments I could be making. As I was looking at Mark who is probably ten, maybe fifteen years younger than me, I was struck by how serious he was all the time. And it occurred to me that I have no idea what that must be like.
When I was in high school, I was apparently a wise-acre. I didn’t know that, I was just having fun with my studies. Last year, I had the opportunity to connect with an old English teacher of mine. When asked if she remembered me, said:
And I just got a flash of a picture of an Irish face, lots of curly hair trying to creep down the face and break some horrible rule of the school, framed by a blue shirt that was a deeper blue than all the other blue shirts.
The smart-alec in me wanted to quip back, “I’m Scottish, not Irish. You can tell the difference because I’m sober ’til at least 3:00 o’clock” but I bit my tongue. I went to a Catholic High School and it probably would not have been appropriate.
When I get in my twenties perhaps, my brain will start to get more serious. Nope, things got worse. I got a really cool job where they paid me to travel, so my stage just got bigger. I saw even more people and things that were more absurd than they were in my backyard.
When I get in my thirties, I’m sure my brain will start to get more mature. That didn’t happen as my two kids became unwitting extras in my non-stop comedy show. On their soccer sign up forms under dad’s occupation, I would write “Professional bum.” For their mom’s, I would write “High fashion underwear model.” I figured one of us would eventually get a call and it wasn’t going to be me. Nobody ever called but it didn’t stop me from doing it.
When I hit forty, that’s when I will grow up. Not having any of that. I just became a more dangerous smart-a** because I had money. Practical jokes and goofy indulgences were not a problem as I could afford to do things I only thought possible before.
I am now staring at the business end of my fifties and I can’t go more than five minutes into a serious conversation. It’s not that I’m immature because I have raised two well-adjusted kids who are now adults, bought and sold a couple homes, built several businesses, I pay taxes, I have conversations with bankers in suits and apparently am a respected member of my community.
People call me sir. And that is really, really funny to me because I see me from this side of my brain.
Yeah, they must just be messing with me. I’m as young as I ever was.
Does anyone else suffer chronic smart-alecitis or is it just me?
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You’re not alone @dogwalkblog I have chronic smart alec too. When you grow up you will take life more seriously http://ht.ly/2piOc
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
You sound like you’re describing me. I explain it like this: when I’m fully engaged in my life I’m at my happiest. My instinct when I’m happy to to spread it around and I do that through laughing and joking. At this stage of the game I celebrate it though when I was younger I thought it was a defect. I love getting older. Really.
Give age a few more years.. you’ll need your sense of humour more than ever
(threw a bone out to our English friends, in reparation for my European comment yesterday 
)
It’s more than smart-alecky. I still remember my eye-rolling and incredulity when my parents tried to explain that despite getting old on the outside, they still felt like a teenager on the inside. Although I didn’t really believe them, my plan was always to age into a wacky cool iconoclastic old lady. While that is still my goal, and I’m not there yet, thankfully, the inside/outside dissonance is starting to keep me awake some nights. Happily, I still have my two best girlfriends from 8th grade, who help me realize that we are just who we should be.
It is the oddest thing about growing older. I wake up every day to more gray hairs, laugh lines and crows feet, but my brain is still just like an antsy little kid. And it is the hardest sensation to explain to my kids. Thankfully, they’ve always thought I was a little nutty, unpredictable and easily led into mischief so hopefully they will dwell less on it as they age and see me as a case study for normal — finally. But I think some people don’t suffer this and their brains do age and get serious as they get older. I suspect.