I am watching a premier league football game (I do not often watch football) and I see a bunch of kids running around.
For me it was also a sports thing, where the last active baseball player older than me retired. Not that I thought I was old, but clearly I was no longer young. I might have mentioned it here 10+ years ago. I’m going to check.
Join the club. I just turned 70, and I feel better now than I did 30 years ago, but when I go outside to throw the baseball around with my 11 yo grandson, I do feel very old. It happens to the best of us.
I remember one time mentioning The Dukes of Hazzard at work and none of my co-workers knew what the hell I was talking about.
So I can’t find a post here, but it was Jamie Moyer who last played in 2012.
I don’t recommend looking for photos of actors/musicians you remember fondly from when you were 30.
I started feeling old the first time a high school girl called me “Sir”.
It was bad enough when college girls started doing it.
Now, cops and doctors are starting to do it.
My wife and I went to a professional basketball game and looking thru the program, the player profiles, realized we were old enough to be parents to some of them. That was around 15-20 years ago.
Most of my “I’m getting old” touchstones have been based on my primary job, which is teaching college kids (excuse me, college young adults). Often a cultural reference, which cycles between them having no idea what I’m taking about, to the reference becoming retro, and then becoming obscure again.
I’ll often say something about “a glitch in the matrix”. They get that one, because the Matrix is a classic movie now.
I mentioned “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou” recently and the student had no idea what I was taking about. When I said “it’s a George Clooney movie” she said “I don’t know that guy. Maybe my mom does.”
The ones that really got me were when I mentioned to a student that I was in middle school for the fall of the Berlin Wall and she reacted with wide-eyed astonishment as though I couldn’t possibly be that old. And last week when I told a student that I had seen both Home Alone and The Little Mermaid in theaters, and she went “woooow.”
It’s so weird to think that the matrix is a classic move now.
Years ago, we tried to get my son and his wife to watch “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou” and they were so bored, they left the house within 20 minutes. I think I almost cried.
Not because I felt old necessarily, but because I realized the two of them couldn’t recognize how good it is.
…or seeing their obituaries constantly appearing in the media.
It’s probably 10 or more years ago that I got a haircut, and the cashier, a pretty young woman easily young enough to be my daughter, was acting really friendly toward me. I initially took it to be flirting, and though I didn’t flirt back (I’m not a creep, honest) for a second I smugly thought to myself “yep, still got it 
”.
Then the cold hard reality hit- she much more likely was being so nice because thought of me as a kindly, harmless old man. I probably reminded her of her dad or uncle or (God forbid) her grandpa.
My wife and I had a moment like that when we mentioned having watched The Great Escape recently to one of the younger adult folks at the school where one of our kids went. It wasn’t bothersome when this person wasn’t familiar with the movie, but when she drew a complete blank on the name Steve McQueen, we were, let’s say, surprised.
I just sort if stopped caring about my career recently. Not the least bit interested in learning new work related task either. I’m on countdown to retire and I just lost interest in what the future of automotive infotainment systems will be like 5 years from now.
So yes, feeling old in that respect. But excited about retirement.
What was disconcerting to me was being in the emergency room and realizing all the medical professionals treating me were YOUNGER than me.
Went to a Greta Van Fleet concert about 5 years ago. The lead singer commented about all the gray hair in the audience, said it was like playing in an old folks home. Someone from the audience hollered back “We are the only people that can afford the concert tickets”.
Yeah. I just bought 2 tickets to Shakira performing in the Miami Dolphins football stadium this upcoming summer. So roughly 90K seats, plus however many they can set up on part of the field. $1200+ for 2 tickets after all the BS fees are included. I bet parking will run north of $100. Now these are nice seats, not not crazy nice. The serious right up front are 5-10x that much.
Live entertainment is not for kids.
Her tour covers about a two dozen huge venues. That multiplies out to a LOT of dollars.
Here’s one that hit home last week. I met with a potential new client last week, she manages email campaigns for her company. After some of the usual chit chat like where are you located and all that, I came to learn that in an astounding coincidence she was from the same small town that I grew up in. But that’s not the part that made me feel old.
I KNEW HER GRANDPARENTS.
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When Patti Smith complained as she put on reading glasses to see her new lyrics in concert.
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When someone on SDMB breathlessly discovers some old coot of an actor who was a dreamboat when I was in high school.
More than a decade ago, my Mrs. Odesio and I went out to dinner. As we were eating, I saw a young woman and her date enter the restaurant through the front door. She was a very attractive woman in her mid 20s wearing an outfit that was completely appropriate for a date but inappropriate for the weather which was approximately 30 degrees and very windy. My first thought was concern she might freeze in that outfit rather than an appreciation of her beauty. At that point, I knew I had aged.