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

Symptoms of Being 35

By

RING W. LARDNER

SILHOUETTES BY

HELEN E. JACOBY

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.

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.

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.