Fitfy is Nitfy · 7:54pm Feb 10th, 2015
My dad turned 50:
The summer after my second year of college.
I was working my way toward an eventual M.A. in Classics (Latin & Greek) and had a part-time job sweeping stairs and moving furniture at the university library--I'd worked a year at the local city library reshelving books while in high school, but since the campus library only had the janitorial position available when I asked, I took it. I'd been doing my three-hour-long Saturday morning radio show at the college station for about a year at that point, had been singing and playing guitar at the local Catholic church for about four years, and my writing was getting purpler and purpler.
Y'know, I sometimes regret having thrown away the stuff I put together during the late 1970s and early 1980s--back before I'd ever even heard the word "fanfiction"--but most of the time, the very thought of it makes me cringe. Because I might have one of the world's worst memories, but I'm fairly certain every bit of what I wrote then was awful: stories set in the talking animal world of Margery Sharp's "Miss Bianca" books; a sequel to Robert C. O'Brien's "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH"; a thing where one of Anne McCaffery's dragonriders appears at our house with a bunch of dragon eggs and my family and friends all get to hatch them and ride around on dragons; some SF stories heavily inspired by Larry Niven's "Known Space" series; like that. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, so I figured I'd just kept going with the stuff I liked until something better came along.
That summer, my sister was finishing her degree in chemical engineering just up the road at CalTech, and both my younger brothers were around since one was still in high school and the other in junior high. A schoolteacher friend-of-the-familiy who lived two doors down was also turning fifty that year, so Mom got together with his wife and organized a party to be held in the alley behind our houses.
I don't remember a single thing about the party, of course, but I remember quite well the banner we hung up over the tables. It was supposed to say "FIFTY IS NIFTY," but as usually happens when the whole bunch of us set to work on any sort of project--my brother-in-law summed it up once as "Too many Laurels and not enough Hardys"--things went slightly awry. The first word somehow went down onto the big stretch of butcher paper as "FITFY," and well, that meant we pretty much had no choice: "FITFY IS NITFY" is how the sign ended up.
And it's a sentiment I find myself agreeing with wholeheartedly as I reach my own fiftieth birthday today. I'm still at home the same way I was thirty years ago, but it's just Dad and me now. I'm still doing my radio program the same way I was thirty years ago, but it's just two hours now and on Sunday afternoons. I'm still singing and playing guitar at the church, I'm back working at the city library again as a clerk, and I like to think my writing's gotten a bit better.
Still, I saw a quote from Muhammad Ali the other day: "The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." It made me wonder for a moment, but for all that I'm largely seeing the same scenery as I did thirty years ago, every day when I walk the mile up to the library and back, I see something different.
And yes, part of that has to do with the constant renovation that goes on in these coastal deserts south of Los Angeles, the current generation of millionaires busily tearing down the homes of the previous generation of millionaires. But I'm sure there's a philosophical point in there somewhere, too.
Nitfy, indeed. 
Mike
Many happy returns :) And Ali didn't quite know what he was talking about methinks.
"Welcome Princess Celest"
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday to you, you "Nitfy Fitfy" year old.
Happy birthday, Augie!
Memento mori.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/11/26/481902.gif
Raise one to 30 years more!
Happy birthday!
I think that you're probably younger at fifty today than your father was thirty years ago, if that makes sense.
Party like a big ol' rutting fox star!
(Or something like that)
Well, Ali meant more about learning and adding stuff in your head rather than specificly what you are doing with your life. Or so I assume having never met him and getting the quote third hand at best.
Still, I think its awesome you are still doing the same thing as you were back then, only modestly bigger and better.
Happy Birthday, from one Mike to another. Have fun and keep being nifty!
I can only hope that in twelve years and pocket change, I have hit my own four-bit mark with such grace and verve. (Seriously, I think I'm out-gray-hairing you already.)
Many happy returns, both temporal and equine!
I hope your birthday is awesome, Augie!
2786146
2785967
2785946
2785840
2785684
2785649
2785575
2785555
Thanks, folks! My near future should hold a Monte Cristo sandwich unless the restaurant's gone out of business again. I don't know what it is, but restaurants that have Monte Cristo sandwiches on their dinner menus are difficult to find around these parts. And then when I do find one, it's usually vanished by the time the next year comes around. Mysterious!
2785533
Every time:
I see that banner, I think it's gonna be a crossover episode with Babar. Except she was Queen Celeste, wasn't she?
2785526
2785882
Yes, it's more about how you look at stuff that what you're looking at, I was thinking.
2785716
My dad's still quite spry as he approaches his 80th this summer: he spends just about every July in Pompeii as part of a team taking pictures of the ruins--he's a retired newspaper photographer, y'see. I hope to do my next 30 years half as well as he did his.
Mike
Happy birthday!
I seem to have attended high school in one of your fanfictions. <.<
Happy birthday, good sir. :D Here's to 50 more?
2785533
Crap. Well...you may have beaten me to it, but I got the picture!! Ha!
cs403317.vk.me/v403317294/5cd0/TM2hSF2siq8.jpg
And Wooooohoooooooooooooooo Happy Birthday
you old bag o' bonesyoung 'un!! You know what this means. You officially get to use the "Back in my day..." clause, you lucky person you. You'll never lose another argument again! Imagine the usefulness in the future writeoff discussions: "Your characters are lacking depth"--"Back in my day, characters didn't need depth!"Seriously though, I hope you've had a good birthday, Augie/Baal :3
Happy birthday man. That has to be one of the most charming blog posts I've read in a while.
Here's to more good stuff from you!
Happy Brithday!
(As somebody who has seen 50 and watched it pass into the rear view mirror, I can tell you it's a lot like 40, only with more parts that hurt when you overdo it.)
This was really heartwarming and lovely... and nifty! Happy Birthday
2785684
2786296
And there's fifty from the wolf in the corner, a bargain at half the age, fifty going seventy, do I hear seventy, this is a one-of-a-kind opportunity, folks, do we have seventy from the gentleman in the front? Fifty, going once ...
2786922
Happy Birthday!
It's a little late, but I'll second... what they said. With all the best wishes.
Happy birthday!
2786296
Well, given the general increase in life expectancy over time and the current actuarial charts, he's got a good shot at it.
And I wonder why no one ever invites me to parties.
Anyway, hope you had a good one!
Happy birthday, and thank you for not suddenly revealing you're a teenager who began writing the pony stories I admire when they were a decade younger than me and thus making me feel like an old.
2786922
I hear seventy, do I hear one hundred, going once, going twice, one hundred to the bearded gentleman, do I hear two hundred, two hun--nine hundred and fifty, sir, you really don't need to bid against yourself, do I hear one thousand, one thousand years, going once... 10^10^120 years, heat death of the universe, going once, going twice, SOLD to the alicorn mare with the gamepad.