Mid life crisis?

So, I guess I've either entered or am very close to entering that "mid life" stage of my existence. That's great and everything but the problem is that I absolutely refuse to grow up! I look at all these people who are close to my age and it seems like they are all far more grown up or mature than I am. This doesn't bother me at all but I just find it interesting. The fact that I'm not married, don't have kids and don't own my own home has a lot to do with this I'm sure. I just don't want to act like I'm nearly 40!

I talked a little bit about the identity issue that I face earlier this week and I suppose this ties into that a great deal,  this quandry into the subject is a great deal more light hearted though. I kind of sit in an awkward position as far as the demographics of people that I spend the majority of my time with, that being those people that I work with. Half of our work force in the laboratory is close to their retirements age, whereas the other half is in their late 20's and early 30's. I have a tendency to view the older crowd in the lab as a bunch of "fuddy duddys". There really isn't a whole lot of socialization or personality going on there. We have 2 genuine "crazy cat ladys", a gentleman who seems to be in a perpetual state of glum and another woman who insists on being the lab martyr. The younger crowd is far more diverse and normalized (well, about as normalized as a bunch of anal retentive laboratorians can be...I do not consider myself to be in this "normalized" bunch in any way shape or form though). A few already have kids and they just seem to act far more mature than I do. I concede that I don't really act like your typical 39 year old (if there really is such a thing) and I would guess that the age that I appear to be really be is around 30. I may not act like a mature 39 year old all the time but I can say that I have an "old soul" and  have probably about as much life experience as someone ten years older than I am.

This brings up the old identity issue again because I really have no idea where I seem to belong. I'm very comfortable with people my own age and older but I always seem to relate better to those who are younger than I am. I spend a great deal of time at one of the coffee shops downtown trying to blend in with the Apple computer using, fancy latte drinking hipsters from the university (I drink sugar free cocoa or chai though). I write in my journal, blog on my iPad (hey look at me, I'm hip, I'm cool....I have an iPad) and generally spend a lot of time watching people. Watching people in downtown Missoula is never dull......you literally never know what you are going to see. Anything goes here in the fashion department, just last week I saw a guy walking down the street with gold latex hot pants on. There is also a hot yoga studio just down the street from the coffee shop and I observe quite a few women all dressed up in hip yoga attire, mats strung across their backs's, coming and going from there. I have come to the conclusion that yoga either makes women smoking hot or only smoking hot women engage in yoga. I'm not sure about either hypothesis so more data needs to gathered and analyzed on the subject. The best "anything goes in Missoula" attire would have to be the the twentysomething woman I saw walking down the street in a black thong leotard, neon pink tights and baggy sweater half off the shouder 'ala Flashdance. I haven't seen that kind of outfit since the late 80's. She wore it proudly and I must say she wore it well though.

Another thing that I have noticed is that it's hip to have a beat up old street bicycle for you to totter around on in a lazy fashion (often while listening to one's iPod). It's so popular here that I see women riding in short skirts all the time. The more torn up the bike is, the more fashionable it is to be seen riding it. My street bike is still very brand new and isn't beat up at all so I guess I don't rate as a hipster in that category. As far as vehicles go though, I am very hip according to Missoula standards. As with street bikes, the more worn your vehicle looks, the more hip it is perceived to be. Granted, even though the offical vehicle of Missoula, Montana is the Subaru wagon and I drive a Mazda 3 wagon, my car is very, very hip. My car started out life as an immaculate, got washed and cleaned every week, titanium grey sports wagon. No four legged animal was even remotely allowed anywhere near my baby. Moving to Kauai changed all of that overnight. JackJack was riding in the car with me nearly everyday on our trips to the beach or to the often muddy trail that we hiked or mountain biked. To this day I still can't believe there are NO self serve car washes on the ENTIRE island. There are car vacuums at every gas station there but they are all broken because they are clogged with sand from the beaches all over the island. If you are going to have a vacuum at a gas station on Kauai, it has to be broken or you aren't really a local. Soon enough, my car was filled with dog hair and about half of a ton of sand from the various exploits I had on Kauai. Couple with that the fact that I left my sunroof open one night when we got over 20 inches of rain in a 24 hour period (I'm not exaggerating and that whole affair is a story for another time), not to mention the various dings and scratches in my car, and it looks sufficiently worn. Add all of the Dave Matthews Band and Hawaii stickers, a rooftop Yakima rack with bike attachments and a rocket box and you have a regular old Missoula hipstermobile.

Sigh....I'm meandering quite a bit today. So where do I fit in? I have no idea, though I'm guessing that I really do better with a younger crowd. Maybe I can make it cool to be that old guy who hangs out with people 10 years younger than he is.....or I can just be that creepy guy sitting in the hipster coffee shop pretending like he's hip and cool drooling over the yoga women walking by all day.....only time with tell!