Another one bites the dust

I mean the above title in the best possible sense. What I mean is that on Saturday we were guests at a surprise birthday party for our friend Jon’s 40th birthday.

These parties seem to be coming fast and furious now. While I still have a few years to go, we rang in my hubby’s in May with a massive party from which our neighbors are still recovering. (Once again, I am really sorry - I didn’t realize a live band on the back deck would be that noisy)

The party on Saturday was an afternoon affair, which saw a funky mix of mostly thirty and forty-somethings lounging poolside, chasing after their toddlers, dancing, listening to great tunes, eating yummy food and drinking potent margaritas.

Graham, as is his wont, went crazy for the party balloons which meant I spent a lot of time lifting him so he could touch them, while simultaneously explaining that they were not his to destroy.

It was a cool party for a cool guy. Jon’s an actor who is currently appearing in Flash Gordon and had a meaty role in the movie Shooter. He’s got 2 great kids (four and six months old) and he’s interesting and fun – he’s sure as hell not what I imagined 40 looked like when I was a teenager.

But then none of my friends on the cusp of 40 are likely candidates for the old folks home. I expressed this to Jon’s fiance/ babymama Sheona - a director/ documentary-filmmaker and one of the all-around funkiest chicks I know. She agreed.

“No one seems their age to me. Remember when our parents turned forty?” she said. “They seemed so much older than we are now. Were they?

Or were they actually cool and we just didn’t realize it?”

A sobering thought. But I think she may be right. I have vague childhood memories of my parents throwing parties during which I was permitted to pass out appetizers and have a few dances before being sent downstairs to the finished basement and told NOT TO COME BACK UP. We kids hunkered down there, eating chips, watching television and rolling our eyes every time the music and laughter from upstairs filtered down. Why were they such dorks?

I’m pretty sure Graham will have similar memories. I’m inclined to believe that human beings really haven’t changed that much for several generations. I don’t think forty-year-olds today are any cooler or any younger than their parents were (or their grandparents were). It just seems like it because now I’M almost 40. (And look at me - I am still SO FUN!)

The fact is I probably don’t seem all that fun to your average teenager, but I could care less. I have my own friends in my own age group and we have our own barometer for what’s cool and what’s not. I don’t think any of us really care what teenagers think.

Twenty years from now today’s teenagers will look around at their friends and be unable to believe how well they managed to preserve their coolness as they approach 40.

And, God willing, my friends and I will be approaching 60 and prattling on about how we have got to be the youngest, coolest, most vibrant senior citizens to ever walk the planet.

And we’ll all be full of shit of course. It’s the circle of life.

Forty is not the new 30. It’s not even the new 40. It’s just 40.

But it looks fabulous on you darling.