I had my first real senior moment the other day. And unlike most senior moments, this one is hard to forget. I was on the subway coming home from work, and as usual the car was crowded with my fellow workers and with the tourists who infest Washington during the summer months, swarming along my usual routes like clouds of gnats.

The few available seats quickly filled. Each seat has room for two adults, but it is not unusual for one person to occupy both halves, plopping themselves down in one seat and putting their briefcase in the other and then looking intently out the window to avoid eye contact. In this case, a little girl, maybe 5 years old, had taken a seat, and the way she was turned, she took up both spots.

Her father immediately told her that she should get up and let someone older sit down, which she did. Nothing happened for a moment, and then I looked around and realized that everyone in the immediate vicinity was looking at me. It suddenly dawned on me that I was the older person her father had referred to. Moreover, everyone else had reached the same conclusion.

Whew! That was a real senior moment, alright. Needless to say, I was shocked at the sudden realization that in other people's eyes I had crossed an invisible barrier into another age group. Sort of like when you got old enough that they stopped asking for your driver's license when you ordered a drink in a restaurant or bar. Only that was a good thing. Looking old enough to sit in the senior seating section without anyone objecting is not a good thing.

I have heard many people say that being old is great. Peter O'Toole, who is well into his 70's, revels in his old age. It is, I suppose, liberating after a certain point, in the Alice Roosevelt Longworth sense of being able to say outrageous things and get away with it because of how old you are.

Well, I'm not there yet. Rather, I seem to be on the flip side of adolescence, a stage we go through on the road from childhood to adulthood. It is a very uncomfortable time in most people's lives because you are too old to enjoy the pleasures of childhood and too young to partake of the pleasures of adulthood.

This is how I feel now, caught between two ages. I think of myself as still young enough to do the things I did in my 40's and even early 50's, but the aching bones and my heedful wife (''watch out you don't hurt your back, dear'') tell me that it is no longer so. I am not old enough to do what old people get to do, which is any damn thing they feel like doing.

No, I am caught up a second adolescence, one last passage, this time from adulthood to senescence. And like all those teenagers hanging around in the mall, I don't feel comfortable in my own skin, too young and too old all at the same time. And in some ways my behavior is becoming as unexpected as a teenager. I find myself making dumb mistakes in judgment that are solely due to the fact that at any given moment I am not sure who I am any more.

Mostly there is a temptation to want to take one more spin around the block before the finality of old age. I hear the rumble of the motorcycle and think of younger days when the hair was longer, the memories flowing around me like the wind during a high speed run. This is why middle age men in their late 50's drive around in red Miatas and flirt with waitresses and spend more time than is necessary combing their hair, trying to get that darned thin spot to not look so thin.

At some point I suppose, I will wake up and feel good about being old. But that day is a long way off. For now, I just endure my second adolescence, including a second generation of pimples, which seem to pop up right before that big meeting. Of course, adolescence does have its moments. The one good thing about the second edition of adolescence is that there is a little more money in the pockets. That sporty new car in the driveway, well that was just a good deal but it doesn't hurt that it handles like it is glued to the road.

In case you are wondering, I grabbed up that seat on the subway. The young construction worker in the seat behind me said something about old age bringing wisdom. God how I wish that was true. All I could tell him was that it is a rumor, one that has yet to be confirmed.

August 23, 2001

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