Category: psychology

Fear of Heights: It’s Partly Biology 

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You could say I’m terrified of heights, but they’re just the delivery system. What I really fear is the rapid, involuntary reunion with the ground. 

I’ve tried multiple variations of that unfunny joke through the years, because I want something to say when the questions, the teasing, and the antagonism starts. The best thing to say in these moments is something, because I’ve tried saying nothing, and it doesn’t work. I also need answers to the internal dilemma I experience when I encounter those who fear just about everything but heights. What’s different about me? If I had an actual phobia, an acrophobia, I wouldn’t be able to climb ladders, go on roller coasters, or zipline through a forest. I found an answer that states that I’m not in the five to ten percent of those who suffer from some form of acrophobia, but I fit within a broader, non-phobic category of twenty-eight percent who suffer from something called a visual height intolerance (VHI). This isn’t the answer I was searching for, but it is an answer.  

Even with that answer, those of us who suffer from VHI don’t understand why we have an irrational, emotional reaction to heights that frail, little old ladies and young teenagers don’t. It makes no sense to us that we struggle to stand atop a twenty-foot ladder and jump into a thirty-foot void tied to a zipline, and other people don’t. 

As our group of eleven made our way through the various ziplines, we got to know one another in superficial ways, and we learned that some of us are doofuses, but even our doofus demographic weren’t as scared as I was. They were having fun. I wanted to believe they were too dumb to know how much danger they were in, but when the people who were more intelligent than me screamed with glee on their turn, the only answer left for me was that I was a fraidycat.  

If you’re an awful, offensive person, you probably attract offensively awful people as friends, and if you don’t have answers for them, they’ll hit you with every mean-spirited, funny joke they know. I also have nice friends, but their sad, sympathetic looks hit deeper than my friends’ jokes, and I tell unfunny jokes to keep those looks off me. No matter which side of the fence they’re on, I suspect that most people enjoy tasting another’s vulnerability so much that they can’t hide their sympathetic, concerned smiles. I know this because that’s how I react to their vulnerabilities.  

“You didn’t like the zipline? Because I thought it was fun!” they say. It’s humbling, embarrassing, and frustrating to be this scared of something that people who make no sense enjoy. We can drop our “C’mons!” on them, but after we algorithm their answers, we find that they genuinely enjoy ziplining. I realize I have no answers for that, other than I’m just scared. I’m scared of something that frail, little old women and teenagers aren’t. The idea that the zipline experience didn’t rattle the teenagers, in particular, really got to me, because I was the one who helped them get over their irrational fears. “Monsters don’t exist,” “Most bugs aren’t as big as your fingernail,” and “You can take control of your nightmares in a way that will prevent them from being as scary.” I taught them that if they are able to rationalize the irrational, they might not fear it as much. I helped them conquer their worst fears in life, and they’re the ones now giving me sympathetic, concerned smiles. 

But I Did It!

One of the answers I have for why I fear ziplining so much is that the plot of most of the nightmares I’ve had since I was a little kid involved being high up on something, looking down, then falling off (or stepping off) a platform into nothingness. We now call this ziplining.   

I did it though! Before we continue, I want it noted that I managed to separate myself from what researchers call a clinical case of acrophobia to one who suffers from what they call a visual height intolerance (VHI). Those with a clinical case, the roughly five to ten percent, would’ve never been able to step off that platform into nothingness secured to nothing more than a line with three reinforced nylon ropes. I did it. I braved my worst fears, and I tweaked those (to me, crippling) fears by ziplining through a forest. I jumped off five different ledges and zoomed 30 feet above the ground from tree to tree. It was one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, and that’s not hyperbole for me. I know that’s sad, but it’s sad but true.

Now, how many of my most beloved and loyal members of my friends and family do you think joined me in the celebration of my accomplishment of conquering what I considered the most terrifying experiences of my life? If you guessed zero, you are correct. I didn’t really need anyone to congratulate me, because when I finally touched ground, I experienced what Irvine Welsh wrote about in his 1993 novel Trainspotting “doing heroine [is] like having 10,000 orgasms at once”, except I would replace “doing heroine” with ziplining. I didn’t need anyone to intensify my reaction to completing the course, in other words, but when they asked me: “Are you going to do it again?” my disgust broke out: 

“Who gives a crap! Right now?” I said. “We’re not even a minute away from me conquering my greatest fear in life, and you’re asking me if I’m going to do it again? Why don’t we take a minute to celebrate what I just did.”  

I enjoy being human don’t get me wrong, and I’m not going to switch species based on one petty grievance, but why do we insist on asking someone if they have the skill, temerity, and resolve to accomplish something great, momentous, and unprecedented again? Why do we insist on doing it right after they did it? They don’t let us savor our accomplishment for one minute. When we graduate high school, which was an incredibly arduous accomplishment for me, the first question was, “So, where are you going to college?” When we receive a promotion, they ask, “Is this a stepping stone, or are you going to fly higher?” Who gives a crap about that now, right now? Right now, I think you should say, “‘Holy Larry!’ You did it!” The key to my frustration, if you haven’t guessed is the “right now” portion of this ubiquitous exercise, the present tense, as in just minutes away from our grand accomplishment. We can get around to all the other stuff when we get around to it, but for now, help me celebrate this accomplishment.   

In the history of Super Bowls, there have been a little over 3,000 NFL players who have reached the pinnacle of winning a ring. As evidenced by the idiotic and obnoxious sideline reporters, we don’t want to let those elite athletes celebrate their enormous accomplishment for five minutes, as these reporters ask the star of the game, immediately after the game, ‘Do you think you can do it again next year?’ The player responds, “I’m just going to celebrate this one for a while.” Rather than focus on the incredible athletic achievement these fifty-three players, coaches, and the team’s hierarchy just accomplished, we want to know if they think they’re going to be able to win it all again next year. I want one of these players to look at these reporters with disgust and say, “Do you want to know what it took from us to get to this point? Do you have any idea what it takes to win what might be the most difficult and prestigious trophies in our country? Do you want to know anything about the sacrifices the fifty-three players on our roster made to make this happen?” I want this NFL player to add, “All those hours you spent watching Netflix, going to parties, and sitting around watching sunsets, I was in the weight room, in dark film rooms, and in grueling two-a-days, and doing it over and over again all year, and that’s not even accounting for everything we did in past years to get to this point. We haven’t had a drop of alcohol or smoked anything all year. I haven’t had a slice of cheese in three years. And we did it all for this moment, so could you, maybe, just give me a moment to celebrate what it took me and only about 3,000 other men to accomplish in life?” 

I understand that some anonymous boob ziplining 30 feet off the ground doesn’t even come close to winning a Super Bowl, but conquering my crippling fear felt just as momentous in the moment. When I reached the final platform, and it was over, truly over, I felt an adrenaline rush that informed me that I could do anything I wanted to in life. When that adrenaline washed out of my system, I softened my stance a little, because I realized that my friends and family couldn’t understand how huge that moment was for me, but I added that it would’ve been nice if they asked me to try to explain it to them before asking me if I was brave enough to do it again.    

I’ll admit that I likely won’t do what was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life ever again (insert your small smile of schadenfreude and sympathy here), but why does that matter? Correction, maybe it should matter at some point in the future, let’s say the one or two years from now when we talk about ziplining again. For now though, right now, let’s just let me celebrate my crowning achievement for a moment. Let’s just take a second and realize how hard this was for me, and let’s celebrate the fact that I did it all with a dry throat and quivering legs.  

When they ask, “Are you going to do it again?” they usually follow our ‘no!’ with, “Really? Because I didn’t think it was that big of a big deal. It was 30 feet off the ground. That’s considered a minor to low-medium elevation zipline experience.”  

Our ziplining experience was probably equivalent to a kiddie slope in skiing, and all people and companies that offer ziplining experiences know to go over the top with safety measures to make sure their customer base feels secure. This involves being secured in at three different points and various other procedures the employees require their customers to go through. Our lives were never on the line, in other words, but that’s all rational and reasonable. Those who suffer visual height intolerance (VHI) and a clinical case of acrophobia know that a fear of heights is irrational, unreasonable, emotional, and now we know that it’s partly psychological too.  

Partly

If you missed the key word of that last sentence, go back and reread it and focus on the third to last word of that last sentence partly, for therein lies an answer.  

The research states that the majority of my fear of heights is mental/ psychological, but there are physical elements involved too. That’s right, I found an answer to why some frail, little old ladies who fear things that go bump in the night, and teenagers who still have some remnants of fear of the boogieman haunting their dreams don’t experience crippling fear on a zipline’s platform, and I do. If you’re an acrophobic or one who suffers from VHI, and you don’t have an answer, you might not consider this a quality answer, but I’m okay with that, because like fear in general, the quality of answers are relative to the person.  

Research has concluded that some brains are just different. That’s not a mind-blowing revelation, I know, but it opens up the idea that some brains, be they in the little old lady or teen demographic, adjust well to heights. Others don’t, and the fear that others experience might feel psychological, but its roots are partly physical too — and those roots vary from person to person. At certain heights, an individual’s balance system, their proprioception, or equilibrium, becomes less stable.  

The sensory‑motor system (vision, vestibular organs, proprioception) of the acrophobic and VHI sufferer generates stronger instability signals at heights. The brain’s balance system—its ability to sense its position, movement, and force without relying on visual input, enabling balance coordination, and precise motor control—becomes less stable at varying heights. Some brains interpret that instability as danger; others don’t. It all depends on which side of that divide you fall. When visual cues are far away, those with a condition can’t use them to stabilize posture, so sway increases. Some people’s brains treat that sway as a threat, triggering fear. Others feel the same physical shift but don’t interpret it as danger. Put simply, some brains handle visual–vestibular mismatches smoothly; others become unstable and anxious. If the acrophobic and VHI person experienced frightening experiences, or they dreamt them up, they may have incidentally linked instability with danger. Others don’t make the same associations. The individual who doesn’t fear heights isn’t braver or made of a stronger constitution, their body just doesn’t send “danger” signals at heights, and their brain won’t amplify those signals.

We do it to ourselves, in other words. Some of us may have experienced real life incidents that forever shaped our reaction to heights, but most of us train our overly creative brain to react to heights in such a manner. If we have always imagined the worst, and/or experienced decades of nightmares where heights played a main character, our trained brain will not handle vestibular mismatches smoothly, and our body won’t stabilize posture very well when visual cues are so far away. As I wrote, sufferers might not consider that answer an epiphany, and it might not prevent the pack of wolves, we call friends, from whipping out their measuring sticks to prove superiority, but it is an answer.  

It’s also an adequate answer to the question, “If you received such an adrenaline rush from tweaking your fear, why wouldn’t you want to do it again?” Adrenaline rushes are short term fixes. They’re not the answer, as we will be just as afraid next time as we were this time, because the portion of our brain that regulates proprioception, or equilibrium, when we’re high up is still going to be a little off.  

My final word to those who suffer from these varying levels of fear when they’re high up is, there is something wrong with you, but it’s not what you think. You’re not a coward, a fraidycat, or a wimp. Your brain is just a little tiny bit off, and in the grand list of physical, psychological, and mental disorders this might be the one everyone would pick if they were forced to pick one at birth.

So, the next time someone calls you chicken, a wuss, or a fraidycat, you can now say, “Well, it’s partly that, but it also has something to do with my overly active sensory-motor system cranking out premium-grade instability signals the moment I achieve altitude. My brain simply refuses to handle visual-vestibular mismatches with any dignity whatsoever.

“And yes, it’s mildly embarrassing, as I’ve never actually plummeted from anything noteworthy. After mining the scientific research put into the study of me and my 22-28% brethren, the best answer I found is that I did this to myself. My overly creative brain has changed me into a certified neural drama queen who instantly routes even ‘minor sway’ into the ‘instability equals instant doom’ shortcut anytime I achieve at least twenty feet of altitude.

“You, on the other hand, haven’t trained your brain to broadcast or amplify overly theatrical danger signals. Congratulations, you calm biological member of the majority, but you’re not necessarily braver or composed of a stronger constitution, your hardware just isn’t quite as hysterically talented as mine.”

I’m not afraid of spiders, snakes, enclosed spaces, injections, germs, thunder and lightning, dogs, flying, or flying dogs, but I do have one highly irrational and emotional fear related to my visual‑vestibular conflict. When I started my research, I wanted to find that we have some gene variant or some sort of genetic clue involving the inner ear that helps us regulate balance. I wanted to be able to say that my condition was directly related to genetics, so I could blame someone or something else. The best answer I found is that modern scientific research finds that my system is likely over‑responsive to height‑related visual‑vestibular mismatch — something that can be influenced by genetics, but also by experience, conditioning, and neural wiring. I wanted something I could drop on my family members and obnoxious friends, but there’s no conclusive, proven casual links. I wanted to find satisfying clarity, but every study kept coming back to the idea that an overwhelming majority of my problem is all my fault, and the same level of creativity I use to write on this site is the culprit fueling my greatest fear. It’s an answer, but it’s not a very satisfying one.

“Never had a Drink. NEVER Will!”

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“I don’t drink,” non-drinkers say proudly. “Never have. NEVER will!” They add that they’ve never experimented with drugs, taken a drag off a cigarette, and they don’t even drink coffee or soda now. Then, just when you think they’re done, they add, “AND I won’t put anything with high fructose corn syrup in my body either!” This is all important to them, but they’ll punctuate their rant with, “I’ve never taken a drink of alcohol.”

My guess is that their message starts out as a noble, humble “If I can do this anyone can” gesture that they hope inspires us to think it’s not necessary to drink to have a good time. They also want to send the message that alcohol does not fill the voids, salve the wounds, or anything else we might attach to alcohol, and they want us to view them as a shining beacon of that message.

The idea that anyone can graduate from college without ever taking a drink astounds some of us, and we’re generous with our praise. We do this because sobriety is a laudable goal, but we know we couldn’t have done it. The message of the sober-for-life crowd is that they were strong enough to avoid the temptation, and that is large part of the equation, but for those of us who caved to peer pressure, it was also about that Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) element.

Sobriety is, was, and always will be a laudable goal, don’t get me wrong, but some of the sober-for-life crowd repeat their message so often that rest of us view the messenger as obnoxious, smug, and so repetitive that the message gets lost in the perceived pursuits of the messenger. My guess is that those who chose sobriety for life have put up with so much over the years/decades that now that many are turning their backs on alcohol, this is their time to shine. I also think they enjoy the praise and the shock so much that they repeat their message as often as they can.

I’m not one of those who say, “C’mon, you know you have. How about at church? did you drink the wine?” I’m not one of those who hunts for hypocrisy or calls people out in any way I can. I accept their testimonial at face value, applaud it, and move on. They can’t. They cannot help but go so over the top that we get sick of hearing about it. They cannot talk about a vacation they took with a group of people, without saying, “Of course, I don’t drink. Never have. NEVER will! But they didn’t know that.” I might admire them, if they could say that without appearing smug, obnoxious, and superior, and I might be in awe of them if they could talk about their lifelong sobriety responsibly.  

The awe I express is a result of me picturing them in my high school, my college years, and my early years in the workforce. “How did you escape high school and college without drinking one alcoholic drink? How did you make friends?” I realize that writing that reveals something about the people I hung around and me, but I consider defeating peer pressure by maintaining sobriety during those years so implausible as to be impossible. We even frowned on responsible drinking when I was a teen. “Responsible drinking? Isn’t that for people in their sixties?” We thought that was such a great line, so hilarious and all that, because we thought it was true. Some were strong, they accepted the requisite beer, and they milked it for hours. It was admirable, but they still broke down. No one I know was forceful enough to defeat the dark side.

I might be wrong, but I think it’s easier to avoid drinking now than it was in my youth. Sobriety is just more acceptable now, and I think the current generation has our generation to thank for that, because they didn’t have to grow up in bars, they weren’t subjected to their dad’s drunken behavior, and they didn’t grow up thinking you had to have a drink in your hand to have a good time. I’m sure young people still have some peer pressure to drink, smoke, and consume high fructose corn syrup, but when I hear someone my age managed to maintain a life of sobriety, I’m doubly impressed, because I know what I went through. If we didn’t have a drink in hand in those years, not only would the party’s host view it as an insult, but we’d get that look from our peers. “C’mon, I thought you were all about fun?”

***

“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink, because when they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.” –Frank Sinatra.  

“I don’t drink,” a friend of mine said. “Never have. NEVER will!”   

“That’s great,” we say, “but I was just asking you if you’ve ever been to a Piggly Wiggly. It’s a supermarket.” 

“I don’t drink.” 

“It has nothing to do with drinking,” we say. “I just thought it was an unusual name for a supermarket, and I wondered if you’ve ever been to one.” 

We could be talking about cracks in the sidewalk, and this guy would find a way to slip a note into the conversation about his lifelong sobriety. Again, “Bravo!” and all that, but after so many repeated reminders, it does start to lose its luster. If you’ve ever met this guy, you know you’ll walk away without knowing his last name, his politics, his religion, or his ethnic heritage, but you’ll know he doesn’t drink, and he NEVER will! They say it so often that on those occasions when they don’t bring it up, it feels odd and creates a void that you’re waiting for them to fill. 

“It’s all about my mama,” he said. “I know how ashamed she would be if I showed up to her home loaded or recovering from a hangover.” He says that on Monday, but on Tuesday, it’s all about brain cells. “I’ll bet I could hold my own against anyone, one-on-one in a debate, because you’ve all killed so many brain cells over the years that I just have a natural advantage over you.”  

If he was a former alcoholic (I know, no one is a former alcoholic), we could understand him bragging about his sobriety all the time. Sobriety is an achievement for someone who was so addicted that alcohol wrecked their life for a chunk of time. We also know that most alcoholics don’t drink to excess because they like the taste. It satisfies some inner need, it fills a void, it defeats an internal demon, and it keeps the forces narrowing in on them at bay. They’re losing those fights so badly that the only, temporary relief they find comes from the contents of a bottle. If, however, you claim that you’ve “Never drank, and they NEVER will!” I guess we could claim that you won by not succumbing to the idea that alcohol is an answer, but you didn’t defeat the temptation of alcohol, because you never really played.

So, if you are a former alcoholic, I’ll sing your praises, applaud, or do whatever I can to encourage your fight. If I’m your party host, and you claim that you’ve never had it, NEVER will, I’ll just say, “Okay, what would you prefer to drink then?” Who cares, in other words. You’re not fighting demons or anything else. You’ve made a laudable lifelong decision and bravo for doing it. At some point, however, it just becomes a preference. If you’re still in your teens-to-twenties and in what I consider the heat of the battle, I might applaud you, because I know the peer pressure to maintain sobriety is intense. If you’ve never had a drink your entire life, and you’re 40+ years in, it’s just kind of who you are at this point, why do you still feel the need to talk about it so often?  

If you’ve never had chocolate and never will, it’s a preference, but I’ve never met someone who brags about never eating chocolate. If you’ve never had pie your whole life, you don’t bring it up at parties, in casual conversations, or in other social situations. You just don’t like pie. If you’ve never worn a T-shirt in public, “Never have. NEVER will!” most people don’t trumpet that. It just is, but people who have never had a drink of alcohol and brag about it so often make me think they are either on the verge of taking a sip, or they use it to feel superior to the rest of us who do drink.

“I don’t drink,” non-drinkers say proudly. “Never have. NEVER will!” Some say this in a manner that suggests they are on offense, and that my reflexive reaction should be a defensive one. It creates an odd magnetic repulsive force (similar to the force of the other side of the magnet) between us that I end by saying, “Well good for you,” I say, which defuses the tension and creates a different, weird tension of deflated expectations. I think they expect me to mount some sort of defense of alcohol, but I don’t know anyone who would defend alcohol, unless they said, “I don’t see anything wrong with drinking responsibly.”

I’m sure former, (lapsed, or however they identify themselves) alcoholics would say I used to be an alcoholic, if they read my story. I would say, at worst, I used to be a binge-alcoholic. I could go an entire week, even a month, without drinking, but when those high school, college, or co-worker, Friday night parties arrived, I got slaughtered. I don’t view that as a brag, or anything admirable, but I never craved alcohol. I didn’t like the taste of beer, wine, or anything harder. After years of sobriety, I tried craft beer and discovered that beer could actually tasted good, but at most I drank maybe two of them a night. In my younger years, alcohol was a social lubricant, and it was a way to drop my social inhibitions. Some said I was more fun and funnier when I had a few beers in me, and I thought I was too, but I admittedly did not know the limits social advocates talk about when they define responsible drinking. I’m quite sure a psychiatrist or psychologist could find a whole host of ghosts and demons that were chasing after me back then, but I didn’t see it. I thought I was drinking to excess for excessive fun. Now that it’s all over, and I don’t drink to get a buzz, drunk, or slaughtered anymore, I still don’t see the any harm in what I did back then. I now down the occasional craft beer, and while the newsfeed articles talk about “What drinking just one glass of alcohol does to your body,” I don’t see the need to stop. 

Getting Older, Older, Old!

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“Now that you’ve seen the whole package,” standup comedian Eddie Pepitone said shortly after walking on stage, “I want to answer the question that you’re all thinking, and the answer is yes, I have had a lot of work done. I’ve had my hair removed and my belly let out, because I was too pretty.” –Eddie Pepitone.  

“Age is a relative concept,” is a phrase we’ve all heard, but what’s the difference between old and old. Ruth was seventy-eight years young, and I don’t describe her age that way to sound culturally sensitive. Ruth was happy, and she loved being alive every day in every way. Most seventy-eight-year-olds, like Jack, don’t. Jack was just tired by the time he reached seventy-eight. I don’t know what he was like before, but the guy I knew would’ve been much happier if he died sooner. Ruth had an infectious smile, and watching her work her way through her day could leave one feeling exhausted. Jack lingered long after he stopped mattering, or caring about matters. Age is a relative concept.

***

We don’t know where we’ll be at age seventy-eight, but we experience indicators along the way. We don’t think about age now, but Jack might say that’s because we’re not seventy-eight, broken down, and just tired. I’ve never tried to act or look younger than I am, and I’ve never lied about my age. I just am who I am, a little older and wiser, but I never really thought about age, until my long-time friend walked into the bar and grille wearing a pair of Crocs. 

Tony Mancuso was all about girls when he was young. He loved them big, tall, short, and small. He was so girl crazy that everything he did in life was to get more girls looking at him. We all did that to some degree, but Tony went further than anyone I knew at the time. Another girl crazy friend, an Aaron, started Tony down this road when he said, “You have it all, great hair, a great personality, and a decent fashion sense. The only thing holding you back,” Aaron said, “is your skin.”  

“What’s a fella supposed to do about their skin?” I asked. “We can grow our hair out, cut it short, buy new clothes, all that, but we can’t do anything about our skin.” I said that with empathy, because I, like Tony, had bad skin. We both had acne pockmarks and scars, holdovers from the severe case we had as teens. 

“Some of the times a fella needs to hear what he needs to hear,” Tony replied.  

“That’s true,” I said, “but what can you do about it?” He shrugged, I shrugged, and the matter sort of devolved into nothingness.  

About a week later, Aaron and Tony found an answer to what I considered an unnecessarily harsh insult, and Tony was willing to sacrifice his good standing in our ultra-male community by applying a little bit of Aaron’s Max Factor Pan-Cake foundation makeup to help cover those unsightly pockmarks and scars. Then, when a little dab didn’t do him, he overdid it. He had a line under his chin he didn’t blend, because he didn’t know he was supposed to blend, so his little sister had to teach him. It didn’t embarrass Tony, because he thought it would all be worth it in the end. Aaron and Tony then began turning their collars up, they stopped wearing hats, and Tony began shaving more often and brushing his teeth on a daily basis, because he knew girls liked that. He was all about marketability and increasing his market share in our teenage dating market. Tony eventually escaped the raging insecurities that drove him to do such things, but seeing him again, after years of separation, in a pair of Crocs, led me to the inescapable notion that we were both old now.

We have an idealized image of ourselves that we see when we’re talking to others, and mirrors don’t reveal the incremental progressions from those delusions. We’re in front of a mirror every day, so we don’t see the aging process, how much weight we’re putting on, or how much hair we’re losing in them. Pictures used to tell those tales, as we could compare them to pictures of us from our past. When we started using our cell phones to take selfies every day, they failed to tell the tale of monthly and yearly progressions. In the age of technological advances, we can live in total denial, until we run into big, glaring signposts that reveal irrefutable facts to us. 

Tony didn’t show up for our reunion dressed in one of those Hawaiian shirts that appear to be issued at the Florida state border, and he wasn’t wearing khaki shorts. No, the man who almost appeared to have a fashion consultant in our previous life together, rocked my whole world by walking up to the table of the bar and grill in a pair of Crocs. 

“Are those Crocs?” I asked him with a level of disdain that I didn’t conceal very well. 

“They’re comfortable,” Tony said.  

‘Holy Crud, we’re old!’ I thought when I realized Tony Mancuso was now choosing comfort over fashion. It had been probably ten years since I last saw him, maybe more, and the transformation between the man I basically grew up around and the man standing before me now were nearly 180 degrees different. If I wore something for comfort, back in the day, he would’ve said, “That’s fine, but you look like an idiot.” If we saw a grown man in a pair of sandals, he would’ve dropped his pat response on the man, “The last man to look cool in a pair of sandals was Jesus of Nazareth.” Now, that man, was basically wearing a pair of them.  

When we’re happily married for as long as Tony and I were, the idea of dating someone else is as far from our purview as free-solo rock climbing. When we’re happily married, we usually hang around other happily married people who haven’t talked about dating for over a decade, and when we don’t talk about such matters, we don’t see those windows closing. We know it in the larger sense, but it feels like those windows are closing, in the present tense, as opposed to closed or slammed shut forevermore. 

When we’re happily married, the idea that our waitress, barista, or whatever service industry employee stands behind the counter, is cute, beautiful, or incredibly attractive, catches our eye. “That never leaves a fella,” my eightysomething uncle once told me. “I don’t care how old you are, or how married you are, it never leaves.” Yet, there is a huge difference between someone catching our eye and rocking our world.  

I now choose to think that the act of admiring a beautiful young woman as equivalent to admiring an artistic masterpiece, the only difference is God and/or mother nature is her Creator and/or creator. My examination of her features is an appreciation of the result of features that have emerged from thousands of genetic variants interacting with each other and the environment. If I walk through an art gallery, and I see a beautiful work of art, I’m going to stop and look, and I might admire it for a spell, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to make any commitments to buying it.  

I don’t know if the waitress who stepped up to take our drink orders that day was that artistic masterpiece, or if I had the effects of Tony’s Crocs swimming around in my head, coupled with the idea that those shoes meant our dating lives were “so over” that the whole situation enhanced her beauty to me. Whatever the case was, I accidentally, incidentally, or situationally leered at her.  

And she didn’t care. She didn’t appear the least bit complimented or disgusted by my faux pas. She appeared so unmoved by it that I felt smaller and more insignificant than I would have if she called me out on it. This has led me to advise beautiful, young women that if you can effectively ignore a leer, as effectively as this waitress did to me, you might make this guy feel so irrelevant that he never leers at another woman again.  

Yet, that leer wasn’t the desperate cry from a lonely well it was when I was younger. When this young, beautiful, and muscularly athletic woman whose features emerged from thousands of genetic variants interacting with each other and the environment generated an almost automatic hedonic and motivational response in me, I think I just wanted to drown out the whispers I was hearing from Tony’s Crocs.   

When we left the bar and grille that night, Tony stood, key in hand, near a 2019 Ford Fiesta, while we talked. He almost acted as if he was going to get in the Fiesta, and I grew distracted by the joke I saw coming as he stood there. The joke involved him nearing the car, as we spoke of other matters, and at the last second, just before we parted, he would pull that key back and say “Gotcha!” He’d then walk over to his 1970 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda. I still had that expectant smile on my face when he said, “All right, I gotta get going,” and he fobbed his Fiesta.   

“Is that yours?” I asked. He said it was. “Is it a rental?” I wondered, thinking maybe he got into a car accident or something.  

“No, it’s mine,” he said. Again, Tony’s whole life, or the life I knew him in, was all about ‘what will the ladies think?’ Now, he’s pitching a car to me based on the idea that “It gets excellent gas mileage” and “The 2019 Ford Fiesta was deemed one of the most reliable and durable cars of the year, with excellent points in terms of drivability.” I didn’t question his research, because my yeah-buts were all about how a man who used to drive late 70s gas hogs that fired up and appeared to run on testosterone and sensitive androgen receptors could now be driving a sensible sedan that all but puttered when he turned the key in the ignition. 

***

Seeing pictures of myself told me some undeniable truths, playing sports against teenagers told me something else, but that day at the bar and grill was so illustrative that I found it slightly and temporarily depressing. Tony Mancuso was my fella for so many years that he felt like my brother from another mother, and seeing him age gracefully and accept the facts of the aging process was so shocking that I didn’t want to talk about it. I expected to suffix his age with years young, as opposed to years old. I expected him to dress like a man on the make, even though he was a happily married man who no longer needed to appear attractive. Seeing that this man who is six months younger than me, either give up entirely or display how comfortable and happy he was in life, caused me a couple sleepless nights.  

‘Nobody is looking at us anymore,’ was my takeaway, ‘and Tony realized this before I did.’ When we were teens, Tony would ask me if his hair looked right, and “What do you think of this shirt?” My pat response to him was to tell him that fewer people were looking than he imagined. Seeing him in a pair of Crocs while driving off in a Ford Fiesta led me to the depressing conclusion that he finally accepted the fact that I was right.   

I never expected to write anything about age insecurity, because I’m more at peace with myself than I’ve ever been. I answer that age old question, “Would you like to go back and do it all over again?” with an asterisk, “If I could go back with my current mindset and everything else as is, I’d love to go back and edit and totally rewrite elements of my life, but I wouldn’t want to go through everything that accompanies youth again. I wouldn’t want to undo all of the psychological and philosophical progress I’ve made just to physically relive my past.  

I’ve also found most of the elements of aging quite pleasing. We’re all insecure to some degree, but insecurities were such an insurmountable obstacle when I was younger that I’m glad most of that is over. I love being a husband, father, and family man so much that I rarely, if ever, think about other things, until they smack me in the face like a signpost.