Huh? Middle aged!?

Last Saturday I was at the library trying to find some of the books which are on my “to read” list. Of course most of them weren’t available (as usual) or lost in some archive …boohoo! But hey, that’s what you get when you have to go to a library. Sure, I could just buy the books, but I read too much (I am a book addict) to buy them all. It would simply cost me a fortune.

But back to the books I was looking for. One of them was a Dutch book called “Op de helft”. When you translate that into English you get something like “Halfway”. This book contains interviews with Dutch celebrities, who are in my age group. It’s not that I want to learn more about those celebrities, I think it’s interesting to find out how others look at life at this age.
It was quite a miracle, but they had that book on the shelf right there and then. Hoorah! So I wrote down the specifics, finding a book in the library can sometimes feel like going on a quest, and walked over to one of the bookcases which hold all sorts of informative books about life etc. Life is quite complex so there are a lot of books on the subject :) To make things easier (uhum) they have created all sorts of sub-categories. Still, it took me a while to find the book I was looking for, but when I finally did it left me a bit dumbfounded. Was I seeing things? Did they actually had the nerve to label this book as being part of the “middle age” section? No, I’m not talking about Middle ages here, but middle age!! Come on…..that would mean I’m middle aged too :( Totally dazed I left the library!

When I got home (with my book of course) I was still a bit perplexed. Am I really middle aged, living in the period they call midlife? Oh, such a shock to the system! My, my, my, I am old, over the hill, past my sell-by date*. This all might sound totally weird to you all, but I never think much about my age. I actually need to think when someone asks my age. I never ever thought about belonging to a certain age category! But I did some research and there is no denying it:

middle age
n.
The time of human life between youth and old age, usually reckoned as the years between 40 and 60. Also called midlife.

Middle age
is a non-specific age when a person is not old, not young, but somewhere in the middle

“Middle age is youth without levity, and age without decay”

Oh, just in case you are wondering……I did not depress me. Okay it did, but just for a few minutes. Now I am back to normal. Hey come on…..They can put a label on me, but I still can make sure it doesn’t stick :)

(* No I am not! :) But isn’t that the thing you supposed to say when you discover something like this)