All the things you really shouldn’t be doing in your 40s
Ulrika Jonsson has this week been sharing details about her night on the tiles with her young adult daughter, owning up to various DRIs (drink-related injuries) and being kicked out of a club. All good fun and, yes, plenty of us – while questioning how it could ever be a good idea to show the world your DRI bruises – will have felt a twinge of recognition. (Some of us were practically the same age as Ulrika, 54, when we awoke the morning after a friend’s party in a super-king-size bed, fully clothed, sandwiched between three of our 20something goddaughter’s girlfriends.) We’ve been there.
Even so, the bender with the young adults that ends messily is on the list of midlife Wake-Up Calls. It’s one of those events that gets logged in your adapting-to-no-longer-being-young brain and as you’re going about your life it’s slowly sinking in, so that the next time someone 34 years younger than you says, “We’re hitting the clubs”, you say, “Have fun! See you in the morning!”. You’re not past it; you’ve still got it. Of course you have. You’re just listening to your best instincts based on recent experience. Here are some of the other midlife wake-up calls you can expect:
Going off Swearing: WUC Starts at 55
Strange one, this, but even if you are rather sweary yourself you notice that it becomes gradually less and less charming and one day you will be roaring something unrepeatable while in a traffic jam and it will sound as wrong as calling your father-in-law “mate”. (Or maybe we just get less swearing-tolerant in midlife? Because we couldn’t help noticing that Greta Thunberg’s swearing at Cop26 made us scrunch up our faces and think “Eew… mistake Greta.”)
What looks good: WUC starts at 48
Everyone has their fashion Achilles heel. The thing they used to look good wearing but now – 30-odd years down the line – is like a neon advertisement for their age. It could be a fedora, it could be a tight top or a short skirt (it often is a short skirt). Of course some women will always look OK in everything but, by 52, most of us need to have a grip of the difference between clothes we used to look good in and clothes we look good in now and we will arrive at that point via a shock revelation in a changing room or bedroom mirror.
One day you put on the black tuxedo you’ve been wearing forever and think who is that washed-out waiter bloke? Last year’s cool hat this year turns you into your mum. And once in a while your WUC will come in the shape of a panicked look in your husband’s eye. (What… do I look blowsy?) You didn’t six months ago, you do now – that’s the way it goes with the midlife wardrobe.
Down with the Kidisms: WUC 50
There is a subsection of WUCs that you only get via your kids and these will involve them avoiding your eyes while you do some of the following: tell a story about a new band you love (mispronouncing the name of the band); use words like “stoked” or “pot”; talk about how you’re thinking of getting a tattoo, or the time you ate the worm in the mescal. It’s whenever you are trying (on reflection) to be down with the kids, which they hate because you’re old enough to be their parents.
Dominating the dance floor: WUC 50
Note the word dominating. Dancing is great. What we’re saying is don’t elbow the youth out of the way while you express yourself fully in the manner of Stevie Nicks – and do not harass the DJ. Once and for all they won’t have Duran Duran, and they won’t thank you for telling them to play “something with words”. (For some of us a tongue-lashing from the DJ has been just what we needed to rein in the habit of trying to control music at parties.)
Being Unreliable: WUC Mid-40s
“I’m standing outside in the rain with the cake and the balloons – where are you?” is not a text that you want to be sending at any point past the age of 45, and that’s pushing it. What can we say? In midlife your reliable friends become increasingly attractive and you realise that being the person who slept in and didn’t make it to the place in time to pick up the essential thing is no longer acceptable, because you are no longer in your 20s.
Not being able to drive: WUC 45
Absolutely fine not to drive, but there will come a point when sitting on the back seat with the teenagers, being driven by your friends, starts to feel less than grown up. One minute it’s fun (“Everyone all right in the back? … Lizzie share the iPad”) then one day – about the age of 45 in our case – it’s gone too far and you need to get a licence, or get the train.
