Damn Filthy Lies: Age is Not Just a Number
Peep Show: Issue #3
Peep Show is a semi-regular series where I pull back the curtain and go full Hemingway.
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."Kim’s Convenience has a hilarious running bit that’s the perfect metaphor for aging.
The sitcom is about a Korean-Canadian family who run a convenience store. Most of the show’s juice comes from cultural mishaps, usually with the Kim’s adult children, but sometimes with innocent bystanders. The very first scene simultaneously scandalized me and convinced me I needed to watch this show.
See for yourself:
Hilarious, right? But you probably also felt a little weird for laughing. It’s a balancing act the show mastered during its 5-season run, but it never felt any less-weird.
The Kim matriarch was a master of something Mr. Kim called the sneak attack. It was shorthand for Mrs. Kim’s tendency to distract, confuse, or outright lie, in the nicest and most loving way possible, in order to get what she wants. It’s passive aggressiveness in church clothes.
Aging is one big sneak attack.
Some blows you see coming. I scheduled a colonoscopy for next month because I’ve reached the age where having someone feed several feet of cable up your butt is considered the height of normalcy. You’d be crazy not to do it. I’m not worried about the procedure, but if the doctor wheels in one of those carts you use to unwind a garden hose, I might turn into Eric Andre.
Why do all the good milestones come early in life, when you are too young and stupid to appreciate them? I guess I still have the “diapers and Jell-O” phase to look forward to, otherwise known as the moment my kids move out and I can drop the whole grown-up pretense. Though I don’t think I’ve really been fooling them. The jig was up the moment I got more toys for Christmas than they did.
I keep meaning to rewatch This is 40 now that I’m in my 40s, because I’m the sort of nerd who likes to fact-check my fiction. The only thing I remember about the movie is Paul Rudd taking dumps with his phone and also some sex stuff with his wife, both of which I endorse, in your 40s or otherwise. I do not recall seeing anything like what happened to me 2 weeks ago.
This is actually 40.1