Just wait until you get USED to being ma’amed. Or, god forbid, expect it!
I remember a time at which it sounded wierd to be called “sir.”
Now, it happens so regularly, I don’t even notice it. Or may be more likely to notice its omission in some settings.
Here’s another one - how about you are officially old when you realize you have more in common with folks 10 years older than you, than 10 years younger? Or even 20 years older. Hell, when I had been working here for 10 years or so, now folks would come on board, and I would realize I had more inn common with their parents than with them.
Here’s a recent one. I’m riding the train home from work, sitting on the upper level. I hear some guy down below yakking on his cell, and I notice “some old guy” sitting in front of the talker, who looks annoyed at having to overhear the conversation.
You can predict the punchline.
At the next stop, I hear someone calling my name. Turns out it is “the old guy.” We went to college together - he is one year older than me!
When I was a kid I was irritated when I heard my parents say “Candy bars were bigger when I was your age, and they only cost a nickel!” or “I remember when Business X was in this building, and now it’s Business Y”, or even “You’re going to be sorry if you give up your piano lessons!”
Then I caught myself thinking “2.79 for a banana split at Dairy Queen? They were .60 when I was a kid!” Also, “They tore out the Gage 4 theaters and put in a restaurant and cocktail club? But that theater is where I fell in love with Peter O’Toole!” or even “Yes, Mother, I am sorry I quit those piano lessons!”
I was in third grade when JFK was killed, so that puts me in context.
Eats_Crayons I remember the first time I was a member of a church and the minister was younger than I! It’s like you said for doctors, we expect them to be the older and wiser person. And can you check your email? I sent you a comment( a funny one I hope), about a post you made earlier in this thread.
There was the time we were discussing a possible trade in the office hockey pool, and I didn’t want a certain player because he was an old, broken-down, grey-bearded ancient methuselah. Then I realised that he was actually a couple years younger than me. That was an odd moment :eek:
I’m 42, so I’ve been over the hill for a while now. But a few scary, telling moments:
In 1984, on the way home from Yankee Stadium, I realized that 1st baseman Don Mattingly was younger than I was. I wasn’t used to pro athletes being YOUNGER than me.
It really weirded me out when I started seeing the SONS of athletes I’d watched as a kid on pro sports teams. Curse you Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds, and Peyton Manning!
The final indignity: Last year, I saw highlights of the Yankees “Old Timers Game.” Don Mattingly was playing in it!
It’s definitely cops that are younger than you that make you feel over the hill. There’s just something fundamentally wrong with being pulled over by somebody who looks like they just finished high school.
I suppose my first experience of over-the-hill came when I was 23, and people stopped asking me if I had a girlfriend and started asking me if I had a wife.
In the army, I remember looking at kids going “How did they fool the recruiter about their age” before finding out they were 20 or so.
And the moment I realized that I was over the hill once and for all, amen and hallelujiah? When I woke up one morning and saw all these kids on those scooter-thingies. You know, the type of scooters our parents had back in the 40’s and 50’s, and we looked at them gathering dust in the garden shed during the 70’s and thought “how lame”? And now they’re cool again?
That’s when I gave up trying to understand kids. I’ve been an old fogey ever since.
I should also mention that I know I’m older now that Led Zepplin and Aerosmith have given way to jazz and Neil Young, but that doesn’t really count, because there was no defining moment when I realized I had switched. Neil just sort of crept up on me in my late 20’s.
Yeah, but astoria is referring to the feeling of “when I grow up, I wanna be just like so-and-so!” and then one day you realize that at 28 you’d be a “veteran.”
I happened to be in a record store at the time Metallica’s cover of “Smokin’ In The Boy’s Room” was a radio hit. The store was playing the original Brownsville Station version, and I overheard one kid say to his buddy, “Oh man! They ripped that one off already?!?”
I read somewhere that this past year’s crop of college freshman are not all that familiar with Pulp Fiction.:eek:
Can any of you remember back to when you were two years old? I was 25 months old the day that WWII was over and that was my first memory.
You all have heard of WWII…haven’t you?
By the way, I think I felt more “over the hill” when I was about 27 than I ever have since. Sometime around forty you realize that it’s just one damned hill after another…
I realized recently that I remember the clothes that are now in style because they’re retro ('80s) from the first time around. That’s probably a sign that you’re too old to be dressing that trendy.
My first over-the-hill moment was some years back when I asked a babysitter for my kids how old she was at the time of the moon landing, and she said, “I dunno, I think I wasn’t born yet.”
Since this year I’m hitting the big Five Oh, I’ve given up worrying about feeling old. I feel old ALL the time. Except when I’m next to my grandmother, who’s 102 and going strong. I mean, here I am hitting half a century – and she’s still MORE THAN TWICE my age! She was in her late teens when World War ONE came along! It does help me maintain perspective…
If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know such a “Hillary Duff” person existed. I only knew of Aaron Carter because the Juniors Department monitors incessantly played that damn “Not Too Young” video many moons ago. And I’m 25.
