How to have a quality midlife crisis

Today, I had coffee with my yoga teacher to talk about yoga teacher training programs in town. I don't really know why I want to take yoga teacher training, other than to get a better sense of how all the pieces fit together at the macro level (I'm a systems thinker). I may or may not want to teach, although I've enjoyed the little teaching I've done in the past (totally different type of teaching, of course).

Meanwhile, on Monday I went to an information session for a year-long University of Washington certificate program for private investigators. It originally caught my eye because of my aspiring interest in being a murder mystery author, but you know, it has also appeared on my list of imaginary lives for some time. There are apparently lots of ways that private investigators make a living, from fraud to criminal defense to civil rights to surveillance. I really liked the instructors - two investigators and a lawyer. To apply, I have to write 250 words on why I want to do it, and a 150-word description of an event I recently witnessed.

I do not require total clarity up front about what I might do with these skills in the long run in order to follow my intuition or curiosity about them. Besides, it never hurts to have a couple more employable skills. (Let's set aside for the moment, as my husband and parents are graciously doing, the fact that I already HAVE extremely employable skills that I obtained via a masters degree and ten hard-won years of work experience.)

The next day, I went to the pool with my friend Monica. I became curious about something that was taking place in the pool, involving an elderly man fully clothed in pants and long sleeves, who got into the pool under the supervision of a life guard and floated around for a while. What was he doing? Proving that he could still swim? Would they actually make someone demonstrate that simply because they were old? Was he taking a test of some sort? Applying for a lifeguard job at the age of 80?

I decided this could by my "recently witnessed event" for my PI school application. But I was also distracted by a man teaching a young boy to swim - probably his grandson - and they were speaking a language that was either Russin or Portuguese, and it was driving me crazy that I couldn't tell which. Hanging on my big foam tube in the deep end of the lovely saltwater pool, I was pulled between these two riveting mysteries. "It's definitely Portuguese," I'd say periodically to Monica, as the mystery pair passed back and forth repeatedly on their training laps. "No, it's Russian. Or maybe something other Slavic language. Oh, look, now they've tossed a life jacket to tht older gentleman - what's that about?"

"You see?" I finally said to Monica, who has known me since I was 12, "I would make a good PI because when it comes right down to it, I'm just damned nosy."

"Yep," she agreed amiably, floating cool and detached on her purple foam worm, "that's definitely true."