Pretty much exactly this.It’s the shock of realization that’s so very disconcerting.
One other memory which still makes me wince. A decade and a half ago, driving Trep jr to University for the first time and then, along with every other parent, carrying his belongings into the halls of residence. I found myself thinking, “Look at that poor old, fat, bald guy struggling up the stairs…” - and realized that, most likely, he was thinking precisely the same about me.
j
I recently met someone at a conference and realized that he had the same name as someone I went to high school with decades ago. But he looked too old to be my classmate.
I decided to check and asked if he had gone to the school, and he said he had. When I asked what years, they were the same as mine!
“I was there then, too!” I said.
He replied, “Really? What did you teach?”
(This is a joke I heard on an episode of Car Talk I listened to a few days ago.)
Longer than that for me ….
I go to a fair number of punk and adjacent shows and it’s often a mix crowd of young people having fun who may or may not be fans, and older people who stand in the back but are definitely fans.
Saw Pulley a couple of years ago, as part of a 4 band line up. The crowd left a nice space for a pit, but one wasn’t really manifesting. The singer calls us out, telling us to close that gap and get closer…“we’re all 51 years old, our backs all hurt, we don’t want to mosh, just come closer so I’m not singing to a hardwood floor”. In my defense, I was a decade or so younger than that! Though I do still occasionally mosh…
Yeah 59 here. Played catch with my 14 yo nephew with a football. Bent back my index finger and I have something called Mallet Finger now, which needs 6 weeks of a splint.
Getting old is a balance between doing things you want to do with your kids while at the same time avoiding getting hurt in the process. It’s a fine line that I often cross and live to regret later. Now I know why my grandfather never wanted to play with me when I was a kid.
Lately, what I have found disturbing are the jokes about the
Generation Xers getting old. So what does that make me
given that I’m from the end of the boomer era?
Retired?
Besides that.
The cutting edge songs I remember topping the charts are now on the classic rock station.
I found an old, worn coin in my change. I took a moment to try to make out the date. It was from 1982.
I started feeling old when I found myself locked in intense negotiations…with myself…about whether a snack was worth the effort of prying out of my Lazy-Boy and shuffling to the kitchen. And if it’s worth the effort to bend over to pick up a dropped snack from the floor, or just leave it for the cats.
I have sometimes mentioned to younger people that I went to many “first US tours” of big-name groups, including Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, and Yes. Increasingly, they don’t recognize Jethro Tull or Yes.
I suspect that this is because there are many continuing references to Led Zeppelin in pop culture, but very few to Tull and Yes. Whatever the reason, I’m old.
I was born in 1961 and never felt like I should be classified as a Baby Boomer, but also not quite an Xer. I just saw somewhere that they have made a new category - The Jones Generation, as in keeping up with the Joneses. This is made up of those born in 1955-1964. So I am no longer a Boomer!
'58 birth and always felt likewise: the youngest Boomers were always several years older than I.
And how many people who know Tull know their pre-Aqualung albums?
I’m not old enough…
Me 
“Sossity” is a frequent earworm for me.
Or think Benefit was their peak?