I turned 40 recently and something hasn’t been quite right since. Perhaps it’s that I was never completely sure I’d make it this far, which seemed a long way off not so long ago. Or perhaps it’s just disconcerting to cross the unofficial halfway line not knowing how close you are to your final destination.

The phrase “middle age” used to make me think of a sunless world where monks flagellated themselves in lines and fear and superstition held sway over reason. A scary time. But, having just arrived at middle age, I can say it’s not as dramatic as that. It’s more like finding yourself halfway across a crosswalk with the walk sign flashing and wondering if you should keep going or turn back. Nothing spectacular. You get a paunch and start making bad clothing choices. That’s all.

It’s an awkward age, like adolescence, and good luck telling anybody about it. Nobody 50 or up can stomach some guy whining about being 40. And nobody under 30 has the time for your existential grievances, unless you can get them into a Tweet (140 characters max.). Even if you manage to hold some under-30 hostage — usually by virtue of blood relation or workplace seniority — you face the old dilemma Yeats wrote about: “I could have warned you but you are young, and so we speak a different tongue.”

With all avenues of commiseration cut off, is it any wonder that 40-somethings invented the midlife crisis? I’ve been thinking of having one myself lately. The trick is in picking the midlife crisis that’s right for you.

Frankly, none of the tried-and-true really suit me. I’m too fond of my wife to be any good at an affair, and in any case she’d kill me immediately afterwards, turning midlife crisis into midlife terminus. I haven’t balded enough yet to get good ROI on a hair transplant, and I’m not willing to go through the pain it would take to have any meaningful work done on my face. That leaves tanning and tattooing, neither of which seem grand enough to do the concept of a midlife crisis justice.

I could start selling real estate. Get myself a red convertible with vanity plates that read “CLOSER1” and carry a Blackberry Typhoon. I like that idea, but I’d rather be one of those fair-weather agents who jumps in when the market’s hot like a Jacuzzi. If I got into the game right now I’d have nobody to blame but a) the doom-and-gloom media; b) draconian city building codes; c) the indolent county recorder; d) folks who don’t get that it’s never been a better time to buy or sell. Between the people I’d have to be angry with as a Realtor and the people who are angry with me as a newspaper editor, I’d have more enemies than Israel.

But why reinvent the wheel, when history has provided us with many a template for midlife crises? The examples I’m most drawn to are in the romantic “escape-from-civilization” genre: Paul Gauguin throwing off his life as a Parisian stockbroker to become a sensualist painter in Tahiti, or Robert Louis Stevenson ditching his Scottish law degree and novelist’s fame to become a storyteller in Samoa. Now those are bold crack-ups, the kind of moves that let people know you’ve really let your life run off the rails.

One of the worst midlife crises, at least to my way of thinking, belonged to the biblical king David. His trouble started when he caught a glimpse of a hottie named Bathsheba bathing naked on a rooftop. He not only had an affair with the woman, he also ordered her husband out to forcibly acquire real estate for him from the Philistines, no money down. Even without the hair transplant, that’s serious wickedness — not the sort of thing you can just make right by purchasing some carbon offsets.

Short of ideas for my own midlife crisis, I celebrated my 40th birthday in Belize in an old Creole village called Crooked Tree. I spent the auspicious day birding with my wife — which is about as far from torrid affairs, cosmetic surgery and real estate as a man can get. We walked through leafy jungle, looking for toucans and hummingbirds. We ate rice and beans in a claptrap restaurant with cicadas buzzing in the giant cashew trees overhead. Nobody knew me or knew that I was sailing over the halfway line. It was the best birthday ever.

Research suggests the midlife crisis is a Western cultural construct — something we 40-somethings made up to get people to think we could blow at any moment. Then, if we do blow, which studies say one in 10 of us do, we have a term for our aberrant behavior. It’s like kicking someone hard in the shins then blaming it on restless leg syndrome, which sounds very medical and thus clearly beyond anyone’s control.

So I’ll keep working on devising my own midlife crisis. Something personal, hopefully original. Then I’ll hold that little ace up my sleeve... Hopefully I won’t have to use it, but it’s nice to know it’s there, ready to go boom.

jbarrus@tooeletranscript.com