Anytime is a good time for a mid-life crisis

A MID-life crisis isn’t necessarily bad.
After all, for every successful forty-year old male who buys a brand-new sports car to ease the effects of middle-age, one car company remains in business, employing thousands who, in turn, provide their families with basic necessities such as food, clothing, and Apple iPhones.
Thanks to moneyed male executives stricken with mid-life crises, many people are able to use, own, and show off their iPhones to their poor, socially-inferior, iPhone-deprived friends. As a result, iPhone people lead infinitely happier, more productive lives, especially compared to those stuck with their low-end, monochrome, single-band Nokias which can’t get a decent signal inside a bus during a rainy night.
Moreover, unlike teenage angst—which is usually shallow, immature, and downright tedious, just like teenagers—the eventual occurrence of a mid-life crisis reflects a significant yet subtle shift in the way people view their achievements, however few and irrelevant.
Take that bronze medal for spelling that you got during the third grade.
By no means is it a cosmic indication that you were destined to become a hotshot editor-in-chief of a national newspaper.
However, the medal—and the small, temporary glory you and your parents got from it—neither cramped your style as a clerk.
After toiling behind a desk for two decades, you begin to realize that the world—including the company which pays your salary—needs paper pushers just like yourself.
Casting off all ambition to become rich and famous by refusing to marry your boss’s fat and ugly daughter, the forty-something clerk with a mid-life crisis discovers a newfound drive to continue working, assiduously keeping track of invoices, vouchers, and memos before the stupid janitor throws them all away.
Having acquired a certain level of maturity about their professional and personal capabilities, individuals on the brink of a mid-life crisis are generally able to take stock of their dreary, empty, and pathetic existence.
In so doing, a mid-life crisis enables everyone to look back at their lofty goals when they were younger and remind themselves their dreams are still within reach only if they win the lotto.
Indeed, there’s nothing like a mid-life crisis to encourage sufferers from turning into replicas of their parents, also known as moody old farts given to sulking whenever their children fail to drop by during the weekend.
Which is why anytime is a good time for a mid-life crisis, especially for people who have yet to have them. So the question now is: why wait for middle age?

Straitjacket

DESPITE differences in age, class, race, and underwear, modern males everywhere pretty much share traditions and activities unique to their gender.
Besides being invariably predisposed to indiscriminate spitting and tasteless nose-picking (especially in public), most men at some point in their lives are required to choose, purchase, and wear formal dinner jackets.
Unfortunately, of the many useless talents I currently have at my disposal, none pertain to fashion, let alone anything vaguely relating to choosing and wearing formal outfits.
After all, since I will never be invited to parties organized by Manila’s well-connected impresarios—none of whom have the rare privilege of my acquaintance—I have chosen to believe that formal fashion apparel is merely a small and artificial aspect of human life.
An invention of the style police, fashion is a form of tyranny to which every teenager—male or female, gay or lesbian—have willingly succumbed, just ask Kuya Germs or Brother Mike Velarde.
However, a recent event has recently disabused me of this notion.
Not only did it make my attendance mandatory, formal clothing was also required, thereby forcing me to capitulate lest I lose my young, pretty, and talented wife to her coterie of male admirers.
So the minute C. received the invitation for a formal sit-down dinner with artists and intellectuals, she and I rushed off to the nearest department store and got myself the cheapest formal-looking dinner jacket that our small income could afford.
Despite its price, the blazer—a dark and handsome two-button affair—brought about my significant social transformation.
Previously a half-assed drunken bum with a crass sense of humor, I—with the jacket on—suddenly looked like I was a sophisticated, witty, and charming member of the Philippine intelligentsia, knowledgeable in the fields of industry and the arts.
But the delusion was short-lived.
The minute I tried the jacket on at home and took a long, hard look at myself in the mirror, I knew, without a doubt, that it was the wrong fit.
Although it was warm and comfortable, the jacket was one size larger, no thanks to shoulder pads the size of bread loaves.
In short, the jacket was the latest—and perhaps the most expensive—sartorial mistake I have ever made ever since I became obsessed with a pair of rubber-soled, tan-colored, faux leather shoes that looked fabulous while I was wearing it inside the store.
Which is why as soon as that dinner is over, I am going to have the jacket repaired. Failing that, I’ll probably even consider selling it. Used clothes, anyone?

Will be home soon

FOREIGN travel is overrated.
Especially if you are unfortunate enough to use a Philippine passport, considered by many immigration authorities around the world as a license to commit random acts of terrorism, crack bombing jokes at airports, and carry excess baggage.
And if you happen to possess a very limited travel budget—which, to many Filipinos, is the only kind of budget available—the difficulties posed by leaving the country can be limitless.
For instance, a delayed flight connection anywhere outside the country can mean spending a night or two at an airport bench since paying for a hotel room can severely compromise your finances.
However, of the many inherent dangers facing Filipinos traveling abroad, none is more insufferable than encountering their fellow countrymen who live abroad, legally or otherwise. Always secure in their superiority over those who have chosen or have been fated to stay in the Philippines, these immigrants eschew their heritage as long as any Filipino—or any member of a dark-skinned race for that matter—is within a two-kilometer radius.
But whenever slighted for some injury, usually imagined and/or exaggerated, they are the first to cry discrimination, always demanding special treatment since they belong to a minority.
This explains why Filipinos such as myself, given the choice, prefer to stay at home.
Besides severely reducing the chances of meeting these kinds of people, I am not required to secure a visa for lounging in bed, even for prolonged periods. Nor will I need a passport to wear overused, underwashed boxer shorts raring to begin to its next life as a rag.
Unfortunately, despite being a self-confessed, stay-at-home, armchair adventurer, I have managed to visit to a number of countries, thanks to the generosity of my superiors and the heroic efforts of my wife.
Owing to her accomplishments, my spouse has been invited to many programs in the US, Asia, and most recently in Europe, where she was given a month-long fellowship to focus on her work while staying in an Italian villa. As it happens, the Italian grant covers board and lodging not only for the grantee but also for her spouse (also known as that lucky bastard whom she agreed to marry for reasons heretofore mysterious to many people).
So while I am enjoying the cool Italian weather, I am nevertheless looking forward to going back to Manila, home of my set of tattered boxer shorts.