Billy Crystal - Still foolin em: where Ive been, where Im going, and where the hell are my keys?

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For Janice

Contents

65 Is Not 60

March 14, 2013, my sixty-fifth birthday. I got up that morning, padded over to the bathroom, threw some water on my face, looked in the mirror, and my uncle Al was staring back at me. My scream brought Janice, my wife of forty-two years, running in. I kept yelling, HOLY SHIT! What the fuck happened to me? Somehow, overnight it seemed, I had turned from a hip, cool baby boomer into a Diane Arbus photograph. I looked at Janice for an encouraging word, for a hug, for an Its okay, Billy, you look great. Its an old mirror. All she did was glance down at my robe, which had opened up, and ask: When did your pubic hair turn gray?

Its hard to believe. Not the part about the pubic hair or that my package now looks like Einstein with Barry Schecks nose. Its the part about how its really happening. And fast. As a kid, I was drawn to the dark side of things. I knew at a young age that no one gets out of this alive, but it seemed that I had time. Back in 1961, when I was thirteen, I would think, In 1978 Ill be thirty. Great, thats so far away. Then when I was thirty I thought, In 1998 Ill be fifty and thats so far away. Now that Im sixty-five I think, In the year 2038 Ill be mostly dead. Or as Miracle Max in The Princess Bride would say, Slightly alive.

Theres some comfort in knowing that there are so many of us boomers in the same boat. Truth is, very soon, the entire country is pretty much going to smell the same, from Los Angeles to Maine. We are all in this together and are all having the same thought: I FUCKING HATE THIS! There are seventy-seven million of us in this age group, and with all our diversity, we have one thing in common: OUR PARENTS WERE RIGHT! It all happened so fast.

During the past year I saw my dermatologist more than I saw my grandkids. Things started to grow on me where they shouldnt. My ass looks like the bottom of a boat. I dont shower anymore; Im sandblasted twice a week. Im always at the dermatologists. He keeps picking at me; Im like his own personal honey-baked ham.

Dont get me wrong, Im not here to bitch and moan. Wait, I am, but Im trying to answer the really fundamental questions of life: Where are we as baby boomers? Where are we going? Where have we been? Did anything we do really matter? If theres an afterlife, do they have digital cable? Whats next for us? Do the Yankees have enough pitching? Why does God make everything small that should be big and everything big that should be small? Like my nuts, why are they now HUGE? Every time I sit on the toilet, I make tea with my balls. Thank you, God, put that and the Nazis on your greatest hits album.

The whole idea of sixty-five is scary, because Im now closer to (gulp) seventy than I am to sixty, but to me, fear has always been a motivator. Americas kids are plump and out of shape, but not me. Have you been to Disneyland lately? Its not a small world after all. Its a big, fat, sweaty-ass-crack world. I, on the other hand, eat organic food, I juice, I work out, and I take comfort in the fact that my sixty-five is not my grandparents sixty-five. When my grandfather was sixty-five he looked eighty and he smelled ninety.

* * *

We all have a different image of what old is, and if you were exposed to senior citizens at a young age, as I was, and they told you, One day youll look like this, it can color your soul with terror. For me, old is my grandfather, coming to visit in his Bermuda shorts hiked up to his tits, and wearing black socks and sandals, and when he would sit down you could see what looked like a small dog in his pants surrounded by a bag of pears. Terrifying. I never wanted to look like that, so I push myself.

At sixty-five I can do the same things I could do at thirty-five, if I could only remember what those things were. At sixty-five things do change quickly.

For one thing, your libido slows down. You dont kid yourself and look at twenty-five-year-olds anymore. Actually, I do, but theyre out of focus, and by the time I get my glasses on, theyre gone. When youre sixty-five, youre surprised by what now turns you on. You look at Dame Edna and think, You know what, maybe.

At sixty-five, when you go out to eat and tell the family that dinner is on you, you mean it literally. Its on your chin, on your shirt, on your pants. Youre usually wearing more than you ate. At sixty-five, youve already had ten colonoscopies. My colon has been photographed more than the fucking Titanic. And its horrible, because we fear the colonoscopy, were terrified of it. For me, I never enter a door marked EXIT . Its the fear of the procedure with the camera and the whole nine yards going up there. Its going to be painful, but as they say, its not the camera that hurts, its the crew. For those who havent had it, let me explain what a colonoscopy is. Basically, youre driving north on a southbound highway if you catch my drift and the drift comes after the procedure. Im telling you, they fill you with hot air. I was literally a hybrid car, I was half gas. Youre like a walking whoopee cushion.

The key to having a happy time as you develop chicken hands is you just have to stay upbeat and optimistic, even as youre trying to make your comb-over not look like Rudy Giuliani circa 1999. Stay positive! I hate seeing guys give up when they turn sixty-five. Just go to the mall. There are the wives, with the husbands trailing behind them. Poor guys, they have no shoulders. They look like paramecia in suburban coats. Theyre just following their wives around the shopping mall, getting excited only when they can have a new front door key made at the locksmith kiosk. They drift around the mall, drifting, drifting, drifting. Its like the march of the very depressed penguins; theyre walkingits not even a walk, its a waddle, its a shuffle, its a wuffle. They just wander around the mall with their wives leading them, and theyre holding the wifes coat in one hand and her pocketbook with the other. And you know whats in her pocketbook?

Their balls.

At sixty-five, youre always a little cold. Even the new thicket of hair on your back doesnt help. You start to think, Global warming isnt such a bad thing. Global warming isnt the only inconvenient truth. The real inconvenient truth is that I now pee in Morse code. Am I painting a pretty picture?

Which gets me to my most important point, the one thing I want you to take from this book, because it can change your life. Its this: that if youre feeling what Im feeling, dont worry because wait, I forgot what I was going to say, what was I talking about give me a minute. Shit! Damn it, I hate when this happens. Oh well, Ill remember sometime before the book is done. Hey, where are my keys?

I Worry

One thing is constant for me. Every night I go to sleep at eleven. I wake up refreshed, ready to go, full of energy, look at the clock, and its one-ten A.M.

Hi, Im Billy and Im an insomniac. Right now, Ive been up since 1948. It actually started back when I was born: First seven days, perfect. I was doing great, sleeping in, clocking twenty hours a night. Then day 8, they woke me up and somebody with a black hat and a beard cut off the tip of my penis. Ive been up ever since.