L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

The Midlife Passages Bill of Rights

July 18, 2007 on 12:45 pm | Join the conversation. You know you want to. | In General Musing

After my bumpy flight the other day, an NPR story about the Airline Passengers Bill of Rights by a frequent business traveler caught my ear. Especially the bit about flying all day to attend an unproductive one-hour meeting. I have a piece of advice: Cut it out. Now.

Here I am unplugging Mr. Coffee between pots to downsize my carbon footprint while thousands of suits are burning up acres of jet fuel for nothing they couldn’t do in a chat window. For shame! Maybe you deserve to pee in your air sickness bag.

But it got me thinking. There’s another group just as deserving of a bill of rights – a group that suffers indignities at least as humiliating and outrageous. So I’ve taken up the flag to petition for a bill of rights that I think is long overdue.

THE MIDLIFE PASSAGES BILL OF RIGHTS

• Establish procedures to respond to all midlife partner complaints within 24 seconds and with appropriate resolution within 2 hours.
• Notify partner within ten minutes of diversions, delays and cancellations. Is it really to much to ask you to pick up the damn phone? You know how we get when you’re late.
• Provide for the essential needs of partner during delays of longer than 3 hours, including chocolate, coffee, foot rubs, and access to a decent shopping.
• Provide for the needs of PMSing, menopausal and just plain crotchety partners by establishing procedures for assisting with the pretense of retrieving lost youth, and the feeding of unrealistic expectations at all times.
• Publish, update and complete monthly a comprehensive list of chores, “honey-dos” and other household repairs and enhancements, including those that have been chronically delayed thirty years or more.
• Compensate “bummed” partners or partners fed up with “this whole fucking age thing” by refund of 150% of kids’ college tuition.
• The formal implementation of a Satisfaction Review Committee, made up actual consumers of pills that supposedly “revitalize your sex life”, diets that “let you eat whatever you want” and exercise equipment that “only takes four minutes a day” – that would have the formal ability to review, investigate, draw and quarter the manufacturers.
• Make children’s information, schedules and orthodontist appointments, cancellations and frequent “ride the mall” program requirements available in an easily accessed location and updated in real-time.
• Ensure that “excess baggage” be handled without harassment or insult; Refrain from notifying us of baggage status even if we explicitly ask if “these pants make me look fat.” Neglect of this provision requires compensation equal to current market value of a week at a spa.
• Require that these rights apply equally to all partners, including intramarital, extramarital, dating and booty call partners but especially to the partner who can make your life a living hell.