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Title: Symptoms of being 35
Author: Ring Lardner
Illustrator: Helen E. Jacoby
Release date: March 9, 2025 [eBook #75571]
Language: English
Original publication: Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1921
Credits: Carla Foust, Tim Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYMPTOMS OF BEING 35 ***
SYMPTOMS OF BEING 35
OTHER BOOKS
BY MR. LARDNER
GULLIBLE’S TRAVELS
MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE
TREAT ’EM ROUGH
THE REAL DOPE
OWN YOUR OWN HOME
THE YOUNG IMMUGRUNTS
[Illustration:
When a man has got a legal wife and 4 and no/100 children what does he
care if he is 35 or double that amt. Besides which they claim that 35
is about the average of all grown ups in the world. If I was born above
the average would I keep it a secret? Don’t be silly.
]
Symptoms of Being 35
_By_
RING W. LARDNER
SILHOUETTES BY
HELEN E. JACOBY
[Illustration]
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1921
THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1921
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
_Printed in the United States of America_
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
On reaching my dottage I ain’t makeing no complaints to the management
and I’m willing to accomodate with a few rules which has enabled me to
reach the age of 35 annums and which if stuck to faithful will bring
you the same results.
Symptoms of Being 35
The other night one of my friends whose name is Legion got me on the
telephone some way another and wanted I should come over and call, but
that is all I done the last 3 or 4 times I had went over there and it
costs a lot of money even in a 4 bit limit. So I said no that I was
busy on a book which I had promised my publisher I would write it.
“What is it about” says Legion.
So I told him “How it feels to be 35.”
“That guy must think you got a good memory” says Legion and hung up on
me.
Well friends 35 is how young I am no matter how old I look, but I am so
use to haveing smart Alex make wise cracks when I tell them my age that
it don’t have no more effect on me now than the 6 day bicycle race.
Only I can’t figure why they think I would lie about it like I was
trying to pose as a boy chess marvel or something. When a man has got a
legal wife and 4 and no one hundredths children what does he care if he
is 35 or double that amt. Besides which they claim that 35 is about the
average of all the grown ups in the world. If I was above the average
would I keep it a secret? Don’t be silly.
And don’t judge a person by their hair gents. Many a man that can
remember the first Ford has got more foliage on their egg than myself
and also I know several ball players in the big league to-day that is
anywheres from 5 to 30 yrs. younger than the present writer that when
the fish applauds them for makeing a 2 handed catch with 1 hand, you
wonder why they don’t take off their cap. Personly I am not sensitive
about my plummage. When my features got to the decision that one of
them would half to retract all I done was thank God they picked the
forehead and not the chin. The only hardship connected with pyorrhea
of the scalp is trying to act supprised when the barber says you are
looseing your hair.
But I guess it ain’t only the loss of a few ebony ringlets that makes
me look senile. It seems like I was over estimated long before I begin
to molt. For inst. I can recall when I was 16 and had a thatch on my
dome like a virtuoso and I used to pal around with a boy who we will
call Geo. Dougan because that was his name and Geo. was going on 21.
Well this was in Niles, Mich., in the days when they sold 6 ⁷⁄₈ beer in
vases and for $.20 you could get enough to patrol 4th St. serenading
true music lovers of the opposing sex. In them hellcyon days 1 of the
few things that was vs. the law was selling it to minors and 2 or 3
of the retail mchts. around town was pretty strick and time and again
I and Geo. would be out shopping and go in a store and order 2 vats
and Dave or Punk or who ever it happened to be would set one up for
me to knock over and then give Geo. a wise cracking smile and ask him
would he like a bottle of white pop. Incidentally I had a taste of that
lucius ambrosia at a ball game once and if the penalty for selling
honest old beer to minors was a $100 fine why 2 to 14 yrs. in a meat
grinder would be mild for a guy that sells white pop on the theory that
its a drink.
[Illustration:
When my features got to the decision that one of them would half to
retract all I done was to thank God they picked the forehead and not
the chin. The only hardship connected with pyorrhea of the scalp is
trying to act supprised when the barber says you are looseing your hair.
]
Well Geo. would say “Aw come on Dave I am older than him.” But you
couldn’t fool Dave and the result was that we would half to take our
custom down to Pigeon’s where everybody that had a dime was the same
age and the only minors was the boys that tried to start a charge acct.
I must hand it to Geo. for one thing. No matter how sore it made him
to get turned down he never told them the truth about me. And they
wouldn’t of believed him if he had of. No more than you birds believe
me now.
But now in regards to this book: When the publisher asked me to write
it up I said I didn’t see how more than only a few people would be
interested because they was only a few that is this old. So he told me
that as a matter of fact pretty near everybody in the world that can
read is either 35 or a few mos. one way or the other and if I didn’t
think that was so to go and look it up in a book. So I looked up in the
encyclopedia and they was nothing in there like he said but I found out
a whole lot of other things that was news to me and maybe the reader
don’t know them neither so I will write them down.
In the 1st. place it says that most people dies when they are 1 yr. old
and the 1st. 10 yrs. is the most fatalist. But if they’s a 100 thousand
people that can manage to get to be 10 yrs. old why then 749 of them
is pretty libel to die the next yr. After that the older you get the
longer you live up to when you are 59 and then you can just about count
on liveing 14 and seven-tenths yrs. more. In other wds. if you ain’t
one of the 749 that crokes between 10 and 11 why you are safe till
about June of the yr. when you are 73. So a person is a sucker to try
and take care of themself at my age and from now on I am going to be a
loose fish and run wild.
Out in Benton Harbor, Mich. however, near where I use to live, they
have got a sex that calls themselfs the Holy Terrors or something that
claims you live as long as you are good and as soon as you do wrong you
die. But I notice that they all wear a beard so as the encyclopedia
can’t tell if they are 73 or 21.
Another thing it says in the book is that figures compiled in Norway
and Sweden shows the death rate amongst bachelors is a lot more than
amongst married men even includeing murder. So anybody that is between
11 and 73 yrs. old and got a wife is practically death proof especially
if you are a Swede.
[Illustration:
In the 1st. place most people dies when they are 1 yr. old and the 1st.
10 yrs. is the most fatalist. But if they’s a 100 thousand people that
can manage to get to be 10 yrs. old why then 749 of them is pretty
libel to die the next yr.... So a person is a sucker to try and take
care of themself at my age and from now on I am going to be a loose
fish and run wild.
]
But all that is either here or there. The idear is to tell how it feels
to be my age and I may as well get to it. Well in the 1st. place I am
speaking for myself only. I don’t know how the other 35 yr. olders
feels about it and don’t care. Probably the most of them don’t feel
near as old as the writer. Laughter is supposed to keep a man young but
if its forced laughter it works the opp. When a guy is named Ring W.
and is expected to split their sides when ever somebody asks if your
middle name is Worm which is an average of 365 times per annum over a
period of 35 annums, why it can’t help from telling on you. Or it don’t
lighten the wgt. of the yrs. none to half to snicker every time they
say Ring give me a ring or Ring why ain’t you a ring master in Ringling
Bros. And yet a number of birds has asked me if that was my real name
or did I assume it. They would probably ask the kaiser if he moved to
Holland to be near the tulips.
I suppose that on the morning of their 21st. birthday the right kind
of a American citizen wakes up full of excitement and says to themself
“Now I am of age and can vote and everything.” And when they come to
what I often call the 35th. mile stone they are even more smoked up
with the thought that now they are eligible to be President and go
around all day stoop shouldered with the new responsibility.
Well I don’t recall how I woke up the day I was 21 if at all but my
last birthday is still green and sour in my memory. I spent the most of
it in Mineola signing mortgages and if I thought of the White House it
was just to wonder if it would do any good to write and tell President
Wilson about the Long Island R. R.
At the present writeing I have got so use to being 35 that I don’t know
if it feels any different from 34 or 33. But I can at lease state that
being 35 don’t feel nothing like being under 30. For inst. when the
telephone rings now days I am scared to death that its somebody asking
us to go somewheres for dinner or somewheres. Six yrs. ago I was afraid
it wasn’t. At 29 home was like they say on the vaudeville stage, a
place to go when all the other joints was closed up. At 35 its a place
you never leave without a loud squawk.
A man don’t appreciate their home till you are up around par for 9
holes. Under 30 you think of it as a dump where you can’t pick out what
you want to eat like roast Vt. turkey or a filet mignon or some of that
prune fed muskrat a la Biltmore. If Kathleen decides in the A. M. that
you are going to crave spare ribs at night why you can either crave
spare ribs at night or put on a hunger strike that won’t get you no
more sympathy than the hiccups.
In them ribald days home is just a kind of a pest where you half to
choke down breakfast or they will think something ails you and talk
about sending for a Dr. And 1 or 2 evenings per wk. when you can’t
think of no reason to go out, its where you half to set around and wait
for 9 o’clock so as you begin to talk about going to bed and sometimes
things gets so desperate that you half to read a book or something.
[Illustration:
When the telephone rings now days I am scared to death that its
somebody asking us to go somewheres for dinner or somewheres. Six
yrs. ago I was afraid it wasn’t. At 29 home was like they say on the
vaudeville stage, a place to go when all the other joints was closed
up. At 35 its a place you never leave without a loud squawk.
]
But at 35 you spell it with a big H. Its where you can take off your
shoes. Its where you can have more soup. Its where you don’t half to
say nothing when they’s nothing to say. Its where they don’t wait till
the meal is all over and then give you a eye dropper full of coffee
raw. Its where you don’t half to listen. Its where they don’t smear
everything with cheese dressing. Its where you can pan everybody
without it going no further. Its where they know you like doughnuts and
what you think about a banana.
When you was 29 you didn’t care for the band to play Home sweet Home.
It was old stuff and a rotten tune any way. Now you hope they won’t
play it neither. Its a pretty tune but it makes you bust out crying.
Bud Holland that lives over to Port Washington wrote a piece for a
magazine a wile ago where he said in it that it kind of shocked him to
find out that young people didn’t act like he was one of them no more.
Well he ain’t but it took the old gaffer a long time to find it out.
Here he is pretty near 39 and I guess the old Methuselum wants folks to
hide I Mary Mac Lane when he comes in the rm.
[Illustration:
But at 35 you spell Home with a big H. Its where you can take off your
shoes. Its where you can have more soup.... Its where you don’t half
to listen.... Its where you can pan everybody without it going no
further.... Its where they know you like doughnuts and what you think
about a banana.
]
Well it was 5 or 6 yrs. ago when I realized that I was past my nonages
as they say. It come to me all of a sudden that the only compliments I
had for a long wile was what a pretty tie you got or something. Nothing
about my natural charms no more. It was an egg’s age since anybody had
called me to 1 side and whispered “I got a T. L. for you. Gertie thinks
your ears is immense.”
I seen then that I wasn’t no longer a larva and I guess maybe it
hurt at first. But its like falling hair or the telephone service or
anything else. When you have lived with it a wile you don’t mind. Which
is just as well because they ain’t a wk. passes when you wouldn’t get
touched on the raw if they was any raw left.
Like for inst. a few wks. back I was up in Boston where I got a young
and beautiful sister in law. When it come time to part from she and her
husband she kissed me 6 times which was suppose to be once for me and
once apiece for the Mrs. and 4 kiddies. Well I thought it was pretty
nice and got kind of excited about it till I looked at her husband to
see how he took it. He took it without batting an eye. To him it was
like as if she was kissing an old cab horse on a bet for the benefit of
the Red Cross. And when I had left and they was alone together, instead
of lepping at her throat with a terrible curse he probably says “Janey,
you’re a good game gal,” and she give him a kiss that meant something.
[Illustration:
A few wks. back I was up in Boston where I got a young and beautiful
sister in law. When it come time to part from she and her husband she
kissed me 6 times which was suppose to be once for me and once apiece
for the Mrs. and 4 kiddies. Well I thought it was pretty nice and got
kind of excited about it till I looked at her husband to see how he
took it. He took it without batting an eye. To him it was like kissing
an old cab horse on a bet for the benefit of the Red Cross.
]
Now an incidence like this would of spoilt my whole trip if I didn’t
look at it in a sensible way which is to say to yourself, “Well if I
wasn’t in the Sears and yellow I wouldn’t of got them 6 kisses. And 6
kisses is ¹⁄₂ a dozen kisses in any language.”
Or for inst. out on the golf course. Suppose I and Grant Rice is
playing with some young whipper snapper like say Jack Wheeler and
they’s only 1 caddy for the 3 of us. “Take them two” says Jack pointing
to my and Grant’s bags but the caddy has all ready took them any way
as soon as he found out which ones belonged to which. Or when one of
my young brother in laws is around the house and I come in the rm. and
they are setting in the easy chair, why they jump up like food shot
from guns and say “Here take this chair.”
All and all when you get hardened to it they’s many advantages in
reaching your dottage. When they’s 7 passengers for a 7 passenger car
its never you that has to take one of them little torture seats. When
your brother in law is here on a visit and the Mrs. thinks it would be
nice to have a fire in the fire place, you ain’t the one that has got
to ruin his clothes. Yes friends the benefits is many fold but if them
¹⁄₂ dozen kisses and a few stray others pretty near as good was all,
why you could still think to yourself Youth may get good service, but
35 ain’t makeing no complaints to the management neither.
As for the gen. symptoms of 35 and vicinity as I have found them and
not speaking for nobody only myself you understand, the following
points may interest science:
1. The patient sometimes finds himself and one lady the only people
left at the table and all the others is danceing. They seems to be
nothing for it but to get up and dance. You start and the music stops
and the young buddies on the flr. claps their hands for a encore. The
patient claps his hands too but not very loud and he hopes to high
heaven the leader will take it in a jokeing way.
2. For some reason another its necessary to find some old papers and in
going through the trunk the patient runs acrost a bunch of souvenirs
and keep sakes like a note a gal wrote him in high school, a picture of
himself in a dirty football suit, a program of the 1907 May festival in
South Bend and etc. “Why keep this junk” he says and dumps them all in
the waste basket.
3. The case develops nausea in the presents of all story tellers except
maybe Irvin Cobb and Riley Wilson and Bert Williams. Any others has to
work pretty fast to get him cornered. Violent chills attends the sound
of those saddest wds. of tongue or pen “I don’t know if you heard this
one or not but it struck me funny. It seems they was a woman went in a
drygoods store in Detroit to buy some towels. Stop me if you heard it
before.” You couldn’t stop them with big Bertha. The best funny storys
is Balzac’s because they are in a book and you don’t half to buy it.
But when you get up vs. one of these here voluntary stag entertainers
you either got to listen and laugh or they put you down as a dumb bell.
[Illustration:
The case develops nausea in the presents of all story tellers except
maybe Irvin Cobb and Riley Wilson and Bert Williams. Any others has
to work pretty fast to get him cornered.... The best funny storys is
Balzac’s because they are in a book and you don’t half to buy it. But
when you get up vs. one of these here voluntary stag entertainers you
either got to listen and laugh or they put you down as a dumb bell.
]
4. The invalid goes to a ball game and along comes the last ¹⁄₂ of the
14th. innings and the score is 1 and 1 and the 1st. guy up makes a base
hit. The patient happens to look at his watch and it says 11 minutes to
6 and if he leaves the park right away he can make the 6:27 home where
as if he waits a few min. he will half to take the 6:54. Without no
hesitation he leaves the park right away and makes the 6:27.
5. The subject is woke up at 3 A. M. by the fire whistle. He sniffles
but can’t smell no smoke. He thinks well it ain’t our house and goes
back to sleep.
6. He sets down after breakfast to read the paper. The mail man comes
and brings him 3 letters. One of them looks like it was a gal’s
writeing. He reads the paper.
7. He buys a magazine in April and reads the first instalment of a
misery serial. The instalment winds up with the servants finding their
master’s body in bed and his head in the ash tray. Everything pts. to
the young wife. Our patient forgets to buy the May number.
8. Somebody calls up and says they are giveing a party Thursday night
for Mabel Normand and can you come. Our hero says he is sorry but
he will be in Washington on business. He hasn’t no more business in
Washington than Gov. Cox.
9. They’s a show in town that you got to see like Frank Craven or
“Mecca.” “It’s a dandy night” says the Mrs. “Shall we drive in or take
the train?” “We will take the train” says our hero.
These is a few of the symptoms as I have observed them and as I say I
am speaking for just myself and maybe I am a peculiar case. They may
not be another 35 yr. older in the world that is affected the same
way and in fact I know several suffers about that age which I am as
different than as day and night. Take Jess Willard for inst. He was
somewheres around 35 in July 1919 and Dempsey knocked him down 7 times
in one rd. He wouldn’t do that to me, not 7 times he wouldn’t. Or look
at Ty Cobb. Do you think they would get me to play center field and
manage a ball club for $30,000? Or would Jim Thorpe’s brother in law
look on him as too frail to hobble down in the basement and get a few
sticks of wood?
On the other hand they might be 2 or 3 brother eagles in the mediocer
30s that is even more mildewed than me, but I am afraid they’s a whole
lot more of them feels like a colt. They take care of themselfs. When
they get up in the A. M. they take a cold plunge and then hang by their
eye teeth on a hook in the closet while they count 50 in Squinch. And
noons when they come back from their lunch of hot milk and ferns, they
roll over on the office rug 10 times without bending their shin.
[Illustration:
When they get up in the A. M. they take a cold plunge and then hang
by their eye teeth on a hook in the closet while they count 50 in
Squinch.... I can’t compete with these babies. I slice a few golf balls
in season but bet. Nov. and May the only exercise I get or want to get
is twice a wk. when I take the buttons out of shirt A and stick them in
shirt B.
]
I can’t compete with these babies. I slice a few golf balls in season
but bet. Nov. and May the only exercise I get or want to get is twice a
wk. when I take the buttons out of shirt A and stick them in shirt B.
They’s still another crowd yet that renews their youth by going back
every yr. to commencement or a class reunion or something. Well I don’t
know if I want to renew my youth or not. Leave bad enough alone is my
slogum. And in the 2d. place I don’t half to go nowheres to a class
reunion. I could hold it in the bath tub. I was the only one that
graduated when I did as it was in March of my freshman yr. and they
didn’t seem to be haveing no commencement exercises for nobody else. I
guess I must have been one of these here infantile proteges like that
11 mos. old junior they got up to Columbia.
No book of this kind would be complete without shooting a few wds. of
unwanted advice at my youngers and betters. For inst. John D. tells the
boys how to build up a fortune and John Jones tells them how to rise
from a white wings to a steeple jack. So it looks like it was up to me
to tell them how to get to be what I am, 35 yrs. old.
Well my lads they’s 4 rules that I made and have stuck to them and I
think you will find they’ll bring you the same results. The 1st. rule
is don’t die the 1st. yr. The 2d. rule is don’t be one of the 749 that
dies when they are 11. The 3d rule is don’t pick a quarrel with a man
like Dempsey. And the 4th. and last rule is marry a girl like Sue.
In explanations of that last rule I will say that the one I married
ain’t Sue but the name don’t make no differents if she is the right
kind of a gal. And the reason I say that is because its customary in
these intimate capital I talks to throw in a paragraph of blurb about
the little woman. What ever success a man has had he has got to pretend
he owes it to Her. So if they’s any glory to be gleaned out of my
success in reaching 35 and looking even older why she can have it.
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Spelling has been retained as originally published.
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