Misspending My Dotage

by Julia Sneden

I've discovered a fine writer named Meghan Daum, whose new book of essays is entitled My Misspent Youth (Open City Books). I really liked the book, which is about a number of subjects that have nothing to do with misspending one's youth, but it's the title that really resonates with me, perhaps because a misspent youth is something I didn't have.

It's a phrase that sounds so exciting and decadent and racy that I think I'd enjoy being able to use it in reference to my own life. It speaks of years filled with self-indulgence, feckless delights and squandered opportunities. It also hints at reformation, because in order to refer to one's misspent youth, one must have grown beyond the misspending and have accomplished something by way of contrast.

For many years, I felt like a bit of a failure precisely because I didn't do all those glamorous things that "misspent youth" implies. I never went to wild parties, or got myself arrested, or drove 100 miles an hour through the desert, or hitchhiked anywhere with anyone. I didn't even dye my hair, and it took me thirty years to work up the courage to have my ears pierced!

Like many children of Depression Era parents, there wasn't much opportunity for me to misspend, not my pennies, and certainly not my childhood. Life was earnest (never simple; don't let anyone tell you that the "good old days" were simple!) and children toed the line. When World War II came along, the rationings and shortages kept everyone in pretty tight rein. There was no gasoline for teenagers to waste on getting to Lover's Lane, so privacy for sexual escapades wasn't easy to come by. It wouldn't have been easy to overindulge in material goods, either, since they, too were rationed. The sense of national purpose did not encourage misspending of any kind. Our only excess was patriotism.

But most of all, my youth wasn't misspent because I was just plain chicken. Not for me the daring experiments with booze and drugs and multiple sex partners. I did smoke, but then, who knew? (My grandmother, that's who. She always referred to cigarettes "coffin nails"). By and large, I was a very average, unquestioning, non-troublemaking young person of modest, acceptable achievements.

Like everyone else, once I grew up and went out into the world, I was too busy and too poor to misspend in any direction. There's nothing like a low-paying entry-level job combined with a first car payment and apartment rental to keep a young adult in line. Next came motherhood, and between exhaustion and the inbred sense of duty, there wasn't a whole lot of room for daring excess. As the children became older, they, too, inhibited any wayward urge for flamboyance. "Mom, please!" they'd whisper whenever it looked as if I might embarrass them.

I kept telling myself that after they were grown and gone, and when I got old, I would at least become a character. Like my Great Aunt Julia, I thought, I'd be unafraid to flout custom or speak my mind. Perhaps I'd even kick over the traces and become like Mehitabel the cat, singing "Toujours Gai" as I danced in the moonlit streets. How I expected this to happen without any practice in my earlier life, I can't imagine.

I read and loved "When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple." "That's me," I thought. "I'll do it. I'll just do it." And that, at least, I do. No pastels or well-bred beiges for this old lady: bright colors, well-worn jeans, funky hats suit me just fine. But beyond minor fashion rebellions, I'm still pretty square.

I'm not even sure that I know what would constitute a misspent dotage. I'm afraid the concept is well beyond me. I just can't find anything excessive enough to qualify.

I suppose I could hit the road and wander footloose for the rest of my life, but who would water my garden or see that Jim the mailman had an occasional cookie?

I could hang out in the local bar, only booze makes me horribly sad, and I wind up in a corner weeping over the world's injustices while everyone else is having a whale of a party.

Hanging out with lowlife types would qualify, but the trouble is that I'm so boring that no lowlife would be caught dead with me.

Perhaps in my search for decadence I could watch TV all day as I sit around in a lavender silk kimono nibbling chocolates. The trouble is that I hate almost everything on TV; kimonos accent my chubbiness; and since my gall bladder surgery, I find that more than one chocolate makes me queasy.

On the other hand, I do love frittering away my time with my nose in a good book; I do indulge in long, solitary walks; I no longer worry about having an immaculately clean house; I don't eat anything I don't like, no matter how good for me it might be. I'm getting better at expressing my own views, and I've become really good at squelching those who treat me like a little old lady.

So maybe I'm managing to be a bit of a character after all.

At this point, really misspending my dotage would probably take a lot more energy than I could muster. I suspect that I lack the imagination to make my remaining years flamboyant and fabulously decadent. I think I'll settle for just getting through them without making a fool of myself.