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There is just about nothing I could do when I was 16 that I
cannot do now … except hang-up calls and the splits. I can't
explain to my children the sheer innocent malice of hang-up
calls, a simple pleasure robbed from them by caller ID.
But I digress.
 There are things I did at 16 so excruciating in retrospect
that simply thinking about them in that shadow hour before
dawn causes me to make the sound you make when you hit your
tailbone really hard — more than a moan, less than a shriek.
Some of my friends still can do splits. One even played a
starring role in a French farce (requiring splits and a
harem costume) that she first acted in 25 years ago. When I
cried, "Brava!" I was cheering for her just-plain moxie.
But, also, I was cheering for my just-plain joy that it was
she rather than I up there in the I Dream of Jeannie outfit,
sliding slowly into that really precarious position, as we
all held our collective breath.
Last summer, when my brother did the limbo, I had similar
agita. Now, my brother is a hockey ref. He's fit, flexible
and only recently 50. In this case, his feat was perhaps
technically more egregious since it was not tropical-resort
limbo, but graduation-barbecue-suburban-lawn limbo; the
question "How low can you go?" was as much philosophical as
physical. How low he could go, in other words, had as much
to do with the comfort of his teenage children (who, with
their friends, made like Secretariat for the nearest break
in the hedge) as it had to do with my brother.
By the way, he indeed did get very low, with very little
pain — in part because he was so far past feeling any.
That's the thing about throwing a kegger after the age of
50. A person might feel limber enough to limbo. Everything
might be uproarious fun, in the moment. The risk is
hindsight: You might look back at some lasting damage, up to
and including moderate disability. When you're 16, or 22, or
25, or even 31 and 3 months … well, tides of youth, and
fortunes of war. However, at 50, as George Orwell said,
everyone has the face he deserves. Now, at 50, we might not
all have the face or the fate we deserve. (I sure don't.)
Still, we must all do what we can to avoid doing what we
must not.
With fate and that rearview mirror in mind, here are a few
things beyond the limbo I'm quite probably beyond doing. So,
join me in just saying no to:
• Parkour.
• Jell-O shots.
• Karaoke after midnight.
• Karaoke after Jell-O shots.
• Trying to break a plank with your head.
• Mud wrestling (intentional).
• Crowd surfing to the mosh pit.
• Joining the Moose. Joining the circus. Joining the ashram.
• Drinking champagne from your son's girlfriend's shoe.
• Drinking champagne from your daughter's boyfriend's shoe.
• Drinking champagne from your own shoe.
• Xtreme bingo cruises.
• Collecting owls made of shells, frogs made of ceramic or
lawn gnomes made of anything — really, really anything.
• Playing basketball in high heels.
• Throwing a wet T-shirt contest. Throwing a wet nightshirt
contest.
• Getting publicly and verbally excited about the number of
stamps in your passport, zeroes in your paycheck, capital
letters before or after your name (unless they're H.R.H.),
number of names on your phone-favorites list, number of
people you could have married, the size of your acreage … or
the size of your anything else.
• Explaining your personal role in the fact that your kids
"never really got into any of that stuff …"
• Explaining your personal role in the fact that your kids
got into an Ivy League college.
• Explaining your personal role in starting the rumor that
Paul was dead.
• Single-spacing your Christmas letter.
• The Dougie.
• Giving up — ever.
About the Author
Jacquelyn Mitchard, the best-selling author of 20 books,
lives near Madison, Wis., with her family. Her next novel,
Second Nature: A Love Story, was published in September,
2011 by Random House.
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