by Bill Geist
First published 1998
Bill Geist faces his fiftieth birthday and discovers that aging attacks from all directions. The AARP sends him membership applications. Restaurant menus blur beyond recognition. Waiters speak in whispers he cannot decode. He starts lying about his age and shopping for motorcycles. An Ab-Roller appears in his home alongside liposuction brochures. At rock concerts, he realizes he could be everyone else's father. Television commercials for adult diapers suddenly seem relevant. His jeans require "relaxed fit" labels. Parties become naptime opportunities. He wakes from nightmares about college tuition bills for kids who are still in elementary school. Car dealerships try to sell him Cadillacs. Geist chronicles each indignity with sharp humor, transforming the universal dread of middle age into comedy. His personal inventory of age-related humiliations reveals how turning fifty forces men to confront their mortality while desperately grasping for youth. The book captures the absurd lengths people go to deny time's passage and the moment when denial becomes impossible.
Genres: humor, american, autobiography, memoir, comedy
Vibes: emotional, humorous, intimate
Tropes: coming-of-age, self-discovery
250 pages · Paperback · Quill