Enter the Cougar

My friend Denise turned 36 last month. Her husband Paul will turn 35 in March. He was quick to mention at her birthday lunch that until his birthday he is officially 2 years younger than Denise which makes her his cougar. I have a problem with this for a number of reasons.

The biggest of those being that the two months between their birthdays don’t count. She was born in 1974, he was born in 1975, that makes them a year apart and a year’s difference in age does not make a cougar. A cougar needs to be more than ten years older than her prey. Which makes Denise totally a non-cougar and Demi Moore, Queen of the Cougars.

I bring all this up because I was born in 1970 and have a birthday coming up next week that I am not exactly psyched about. I didn’t mind turning 30 but I don’t want to be 40. I just don’t. It’s not me. And I know 40 is the new 30 and Joe Lies wears it well, but not me. I was born to be in my thirties. I excel at it and really it’s where I should stay but time does not agree with me. And it doesn’t help that Bobby is what I consider a year younger than me, but what he loves to point out is really twenty months younger. If he so much as purrs at me like a cougar on my birthday, he’s going down.

Age is a funny thing because it can be a big difference between people one day and the next day the gap closes.

I was telling a story to some friends over the holidays about how when I was a child and my mom would make lunch for my brother and I, we would pretend we were the children – Buffy & Jody – from the TV show Family Affair and we would make my mom be their butler, Mr. French - no matter how much she protested and begged to be their cool teenage sister Cissy.

My friends, the O’Brien twins, looked at each other with confusion because they were too young to get the Family Affair reference. Family Affair aired from 1966 till 1971, and so as someone born in 1970, I enjoyed the program in syndication. My friend James pointed out that he watched it as a first run series which made me feel a little younger. Thanks, James. I knew there was a reason I like you so much.

For my kids, who are both under five, a couple of months difference in age can make you completely incompatible. But I know when they get older; that they’ll have friends who are a year or two older than them and it won’t be a big deal. And then suddenly, when they get into their twenties and beyond, the gap will start to close even more so that they have friends who are six, eight, ten or more years older or younger than them. It’s only when someone makes a cultural reference that everyone doesn’t get that you realize you’re the old goat. That’s when I’m most grateful for my friendship with Joe Lies because as I’ve alluded before, despite his good looks and cool demeanor, he is older than father time.

One of my closest adult friendships started when I was the babysitter for my friend Cece. I’ve known Cece since she was born. Our parents were old family friends and our dads worked together. At lawyer functions, I was often asked to keep an eye on the younger kids and ended up “babysitting” Cece and her siblings. Decades later when the six year age gap between us had closed and we were at happy hour together, Cece admitted to me that she had thought the demin dress I wore to my high school graduation party was awesome and had vowed to her sister that one day she would be cool enough to hang out with me. That demin dress, with padded shoulders and a cut out back no less, was truly hideous. And the idea that some little kid had thought I was cool in it made time stand still for a minute. Those moments happen a lot when the people who are supposed to be younger than you keep getting older.

My friend Pat is a soccer coach and he knows everyone involved in soccer in our area. Because of this, he has friends of all different ages. When you meet Pat out for drinks, sometimes it’s with the dad of a kid you grew up with and sometimes it’s with a kid so young you could have conceived him yourself. When we were in our early twenties, Pat started bringing this underage guy named Dave out with us all the time. It was a real pain because if Dave couldn’t get into a bar everyone had to leave. My friends and I called him “Underage Dave”. He’s thirty-three now and if I saw him on the street tomorrow, I would yell “Hey Underage Dave!” He will never be an “of age Dave” to me.

Joe Lies and I used to work with a girl named Justin. We were in our thirties. Justin was maybe twenty three. And although she was our good pal, sometimes we would have conversations where it seemed we were speaking different languages. I once made a mix tape for some coworkers that included “Overkill” performed by Colin Hay. At happy hour one night, Justin commented to me and Joe that she loved that song and asked who sang it. Colin Hay didn’t ring a bell to her, so I said “you know the lead singer from Men at Work”. Justin smiled and said “OMG! I loved that movie with Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. Is it from the soundtrack?” We tried to explain that, first of all, she should never admit to loving that movie again and second of all, Men at Work was a band in the 80’s, but the gap was too wide. No one could swim it. When I told another friend about Justin’s confusion at a party later that summer, he grabbed her and yelled “Quick! Someone get Justin a vegemite sandwich!” Again, she stared at us blankly. And we loved her for it.

I think surrounding yourself with people of different ages keeps us younger. Our older friends make us feel like maybe we’re not so old after all. And our younger friends remind us why being a little older isn’t such a bad thing. So maybe being a cougar isn’t the worst thing that could happen to a girl after all. Demi seems to be thriving. And my 20 months younger husband is hot in a much more masculine way than Ashton. Could 40 really be the new 30? I’ll let you know.