When did I become obsessed with age? I can’t stop thinking about it.

I seldom feel old when I’m alone. A feeling of age, not of decrepitude or staleness, but of ripeness, comes over me in public settings such as this Myrtle Beach parking lot. I’m here to celebrate my parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. My four brothers, my sister, and all their spouses and children are also here.

My parents are old in such a setting, are they not? Certainly, they don’t care to tan in Speedos or bikini wear. Dad plays a little golf, but at 74, he’s been battling a minor hernia. No green fees on this trip. Yet on the beach earlier today, I saw men who looked older than Dad who were not only in Speedos but were earnestly jogging as if in training for a competition.

If I feel old, how does Dad feel up there on the 18th floor of his hotel room? It’s his naptime. How does Mom feel, having survived two minor strokes during the past four years?

When did a stroke become minor? Sign of age, surely.

And me, will I be like Lear, old before I’m wise? I ask myself this when I spot in a parking lot a shirtless freshly crimsoned frat-boy-type  in chrome wrap-around sunglasses, rubber sandals, and an oversized pair of flowery trunks still wet enough to hug his hairy legs. Early twenties, muscular, hair wind-blown, his arms are tattooed wrist-to-shoulder to look as if dipped in kaleidoscopic melted candle wax.

His phone remains glued to his ear in that distinctly 21st-century pose that makes me think we’ve all rushed to sign up for our own 4-G key cards to the tower of pretense. Does Frat Boy really need to be on the horn? Is he CIA, or FBI? He looks like a cross between Tom Selleck and Frankie Avalon. Extra-aware of his sex appeal, he leans against the grill of a white SUV with gold trim, and then jumps away having scalded his back.

My eyes sharpen when I hear him bark in a distinctly non-Southern accent, “Fuck that ho, man, I mean fuck her. . . .”
The editorial bleeps are mine. You see, I must be old; I prefer polite speech.

The air carries traces of coconut lotion mixed with motor oil under heated car hoods. I hear my conscience let out a stage whisper: Just ignore him.

I don’t like this young man. Would he address me as Dude? Or as Sir? Likely the former. I don’t understand him. At his age, I addressed all older men as Sir. The best ride I could afford was a silver Plymouth bought for $300, with a blue driver’s side door, and a white hood. We called it the Three-Tone. Did all repairs myself, didn’t own a mobile phone, and I worked two jobs. True enough, I hated every minute of them, but I had no choice. I had to pay for a room in a house shared with three other young guys. Two were Navy vets. We worked all the time, and our idea of a party was a lot of cheap beer and striking out at bars that featured live music.

Was he really a frat boy? He looked so well heeled, groomed, with perfect teeth. Yet his act was gangster, with his profanity, exorbitant tattoos, his dope-dealer’s posture and ride.

Was there a day or an hour during the nineties when an entire generation decided to grow up posing as gangsters? Am I old, downright senile to think that the feral sexist racist lyrics found in rap music hasn’t generated anything like decency among the young? What are they so pissed off about, anyway? There’s no draft. They have cars, phones, stylish clothes, and even the poorest among them have a safety net that’s never been bigger and better funded.

Granted, unemployment is high these days, but it was during Carter’s, Reagan’s, and Daddy Bush’s eras, as well. I see the wealth such young men flaunt everywhere I go. Chrome wheels, techno gadgets: hyper-individuality overstated, with an urban veneer – he, like all members of his posse, superstar special. Born to kill.

I’m forty-nine, young by most accounts, but one glance at Frat Boy turns me into a fossil.

Conscience smirks, asking if I listen to myself. Maybe turning inward is what makes me feel old, wanting to listen rather than rant, trusting I lack any new macaroni worth flinging at the public arena’s walls.

I see a car parked next to the SUV, a faded silver Ford Taurus, the kind of rig a dutiful middle manager might own. As if hiding behind the sedan, a woman and two boys and two girls, wipe sand off their feet. They share a ratty towel, and slip into worn sneakers and dry shirts. The mother of this quartet looks nervous. She, too, has heard the foul language.
I want to tell Frat Boy this planet is more than his stage. My old-man voice steps in to say that I know better. One day, someone will tell Frat Boy when he needs to hear it most. When it hurts the most. He won’t like it. Until then, I’m wallpaper to him, like everyone else.

There’s a clicking sound. SUV doors pop open. Frat Boy’s ride is an Escalade. Squinting, he lands one paw against his crotch to hike up his package, crowing, “Yo, Homey, whassup?”

I cringe. He’s trying so hard to sound menacing and black-ghetto, like he’s an underworld force to be feared. Have all 20-somethings sounded so ridiculous and venal to their elders? Perhaps so. My old-man voice assures me of this, too.
I sneak a glance at the mother near her Taurus. Is she wondering if it’s possible to protect her children from such influences? I remember my Mom’s threats to wash out my mouth with soap. They seem tame and silly. My Dad, like Mister Rogers in his cardigan, cooked pancakes on Sunday mornings. As punishment for curses I’d used during the week, he’d send me outdoors to burn trash in a steel barrel. Mom kept a list for him. Dad would sit my brothers and me down every Sunday after Mass, and word by word, he’d go through his list. Our choices of profanity were lame by today’s standards, but Dad would ask, “Do you know what these words really mean? Do you know how they can hurt people?”

I seldom did. My father would enlighten me. He liked to say I was better than such filth, that I had imagination.
Who lectures the Frat Boy? Does he even have a father? Why do I care?

I have to. I’m old. I see that we’re sharing this space. I fear he may be carrying a weapon.

The mature thinker in me takes over. I begin to wonder if we, as a society, have grown too permissive. I don’t want to judge. I’m not this lad’s parent, but I am a citizen. I suspect others have these moments, too, when they feel an ethos of consideration and public respect has died. That the simmering violence beneath our public surfaces has gotten out of hand.

On the other hand, have we ever really been a peaceful nation?

If my wife were with me, she’d say the young have always been brash. She wouldn’t remind me that I’m getting old. I’d remind myself. She’d say I’m growing up. There’s a difference.

So to be old is to be worked up over every loud monkey in the woodwork. Is it to know loss and humiliation, and to find it easier to be compassionate? To have these fearful puzzled moments when you’re outside looking in? I feel sympathy for Mom hiding behind her Taurus. Looks as if she gets sun maybe twice a year and is making an effort to spend quality time with her brood. Perhaps she finds it pathetic that she lives near the ocean and never sails, dives, or goes fishing. Never walks the shore at sunset. Is there a husband in the picture? If so, judging by Mom’s figure, I doubt there’s much voltage in the bedroom. I imagine her kids, cooped-up on rainy days, screaming through the house.

This mother wants her kids to be well adjusted. So do I.

Perhaps in the eyes of older men – those who fought in Vietnam, Korea, WW2 – I came across the same way when younger. I wore an earring, tight jeans, my hair short but always a mess. I was a fan of Johnny Rotten, but I never dealt drugs, carried a gun, or a phone. Tattoos were earned by Navy men and prisoners. One of my friends peddled baggies of weed, and he learned the legal system the hard way.

I hear a gull caw overhead. I look up. I’m blinded a moment, can’t see it. When I look down, I see Frat Boy getting into his big ride.

I see Mom shoving her kiddies in. The task of getting them home looms, a nagging presence, like the bills. Mom lifts her left leg and wipes sand from a scar there, an unsightly glob of shining pink that’s the size and texture of a jellyfish. This jellyfish has exploded and stayed put, flesh blown from flesh and stitched in place, sloppily so, never to be removed.   
This is Mom’s tramp stamp, and pledge of solidarity with the unique. Does it represent a life-threatening injury, or a long-gone wildcat past? I suspect that Mom can’t afford laser surgery to have it removed.

I just can’t stop staring. Mom gets in. The kids are hungry. She must stop for dinner; she promised. It will be cheap, the food unhealthy, and for a crew of four that means another swipe of the plastic. She isn’t sure which one she’ll use. They’re all nearly maxed out.

Never easy for a parent. Never enough time. With the Internet at our fingertips, each moment holds the expectation of arrival. Nobody dies in cyberspace. Google isn’t seen as a private company, or a Soviet-like version of a Ministry Of Information. Google is our portable memory telling us we all get old overnight. No time for gravity, long books, sullen rumination.

Frat Boy starts his ride. As he rolls away, music comes up, a bass line like an overstated pulse meant to cannibalize every tender vibration the terns, gulls, sandpipers and salty air have to offer. Does this affect the four children? Yes, but they don’t know it. Such a pulse is normal for them. It’s cool.

I know I’m an antique when I happily admit to disliking anything deemed cool.

I watch the power struggle between Mom and her kids until the little ones relent and start locking seat belts. Handheld electronic devices appear. A girl with wet brown hair, the oldest, sits next to Mom in front. Sun-parched, frowning, she plugs in ear buds.

What’s a mother to do? Has she a ready outfit for work tomorrow? She isn’t sure what she’ll make for the kid’s lunches. Where should they eat dinner? This choice can be tricky. Two have food allergies, and all four have prickly tastes.
I can’t stop feeling pity for that mother. Maybe it’s the scar. Looks like her doctor used a butter knife and trowel. The kids in the back seat, each in their own orbits, run thumbs over tiny keypads. Mom behind the wheel has often worried this keypad obsession may cause Carpal Tunnel. The kids didn’t enjoy the beach as she’d hoped they would. Not the way they’re enjoying their gadgets. Her oldest didn’t swim. Sat on a blanket and sulked the whole time.

What happened to family togetherness? Maybe it was never there. Maybe it’s a myth.

I hear the mother try to sound perky, asking, “All set?”

Her oldest keens her eyes through the window and sees me gawking from across the lot.

“Mom,” she whines, drawing it out. “That stupid dork is staring at us.”

“No he’s not. And don’t call him a dork.”

I could be a pervert. They’re everywhere, Mom’s worst nightmare. Just to be sure, Mom glances my way. I’m a step ahead of her. I look up at a shoreline horizon lined with chalk-white hotels. Even for all its over-development, Myrtle Beach retains a honky-tonk charm. It may look like Florida’s glitzier eastern coast, but it’s not.

The moment is a tight one, and when I look down, I see Mom’s hardened features. I want to tell her that I know her pain, that I saw her scar, that some of her frustrations are my own.

The moment ends when a red Mini-Cooper, music loud through open windows, screeches around a corner and nearly blindsides me. Its driver, a young girl with a cellphone wedged against one ear, shoots me a malicious scowl. I hear the kids in the car shriek with laughter.

Now I’ve become a museum piece. I’m cracked leather in swim trunks, limp flesh with rolled towel, white hairs on chest, sagging nipples. I want to roar and pound my chest, howling out vile jelly like Lear when he gouged his eyes from their sockets.

I blush, head down, and shove myself along toward the beach. Have I learned anything about tolerance, patience and adult behavior? I’m the one, not Frat Boy, the mother, or the girl, who must be better.

Over the murmur of surf, I hear a voice from the beach shouting, “Ice cream, Mommy. Ice cream.”

The struggle is everywhere. My mother would have grinned and reassured me some other time. She wouldn’t have promised a thing. She never promised. It was one of her rules.

I look back hoping to see the Taurus rolling away. I don’t. What promises must that mother never make? Do we live by choices or fate? Do we control anything? My conscience, with a shrug, says we don’t.

I argue back that we do. The ride, the phone, a concealed weapon, tattoos – these are all choices.

Conscience reminds me that anger is convenient, and faith is difficult. A sneaky smile plays on my lips. So that’s it. No crime to feel old. I blow a sigh of relief, but I can’t say why.

I walk along to the beach in my sandals. The sand is hot, the fumes of seaweed strong.

Who doesn’t love the beach at this time of day? Sunlight soft and sherbet hues settling in. High saw-grass blades that bend under small erratic breezes.

If I’m of sound mind, I can trust my worst hours will bring lessons. I’ll never again feel that mix of dread and elation that comes with events that mark earned passage. Old? Perhaps. Wise? Getting there. The cloying racket of the day-to-day won’t go away. I need to remember this, along with my mother’s patience, and my father’s disciplined mind.

It’s their fiftieth, by God – I should talk to them about these things. How would Dad respond to my remarking that filth, like anger, is popular because it’s easy?

My face lights up as I scan the horizon. Am I not blessed to have any family, let alone my dear old parents, still around, still together, still in love? Tonight is gonna be one heck of a dinner for them.

The surf throws down a soft boom, each wave rising from a dark mutable source we never know completely but must endure. Time slows. I look again to the sky. Low cirrus blazes flamingo pink. Gulls hover, tilting in flight to remind me we are not young, and we are not old. We are forever in motion.