I was at the club 2 days ago ordering dinner from the young waitress and a song came on by Shannon Noll, part of the detritus of Australian Idol, and I said that I would rather tear my ears off than hear him again. She agreed and asked what did I like listening to, “At the moment Blink 182, Eminem, Linkin Park…” I trailed of as this look of absolute wonder came over her face and I realised her parents are probably telling her “Turn that crap off. It’s not music,” and I look like them.
Hit me yesterday. I’m about 10 days from 37 and just had an email alerting me (a year in advance) to make plans for the big 20 year high school reunion for the class of 1985. :eek:
Now, I went to the website and dug around, reading bio’s of all these people. ALL of them are married with children, most have two but several have 5!!! I haven’t even gotten the after college travel bug out of my system, much less got married and here I will be the ONLY one who is not married with kids. WHAT ON EARTH will we talk about?? “yeah dude, just got back from 3 months in Thailand. Oh, that’s nice, we’d love to go but our oldest daughter needs braces, you know how it is. Uhm, not really.”
Anyway, I know I exagerate and heck, we are all in the same boat (us 85’ers) but now I feel old and like I am an underachiever all over again…guess I won’t be able to hang out with the cool crowd at the reunion.
Powers
I was watching an episode of Password this morning, the old black and white version, and the password was “profile” and the first clue that came to my mind was “Barrymore.” I realized a moment later that of people my age probably 1% would understand the clue.
Not that I’m old enough to remember any Barrymores in first-run movies other than Drew, but still…
Me, too. But the good news is that if I look in the mirror before I put my glasses on, I don’t look too bad at all! 
As for Snakespirit’s “pills, pills, pills”, yeah, I got that one, too. Just recently, my doc put me on two different meds to help slow down my development of kidney stones. Both types fall into the “once a day for the rest of your life” category. Yikes.
Good lord, why? Do you also teach them the Tootsie Roll?
(Don’t answer that.)
[prom shoes] To the left! To the left!
To the right! To the right!
To the front! To the front!
To the back! To the back!
Now dip, baby, dip! Dip, baby, dip!
Slide, slide, slide, slide…
[/prom shoes]
I believe I feel a whoop coming up, indeed.
Back in 1995 after a Cleveland Indians game my friends, John and Paul, and I went to Hooters for some beers and some relatively inexpensive girl watching. John is a very good looking guy who was home on leave from the USAF and the girls there just flocked around him. Paul and I tried our best to get some flirting in edgewise but it was clear none of the girls were even going to pretend to have any interest in either of us and so we took it in stride. However, one of the lovelies said to me that I’d be perfect for her mother.
When a Hooters Girl offers to fix you up with her mother you are by definition old.
The movie American Graffiti was set in 1962. The film came out in 1973.
If they were making that nostalgia movie today, they’d be making it about the year 1993!!!
Similarly, The Big Chill came out in 1983, and featured mature adults reminiscing about their college experiences in 1968.
If they were making The Big Chill today, it would be about people who graduated college in 1989.
There’s some harsh persepective for you.
(Speaking of which, I watched Singles for the first timea couple of weeks ago and experienced waves of 1990s nostalgia.)
Except for a very few exceptions this whole thread is an example of what makes me feel old. Most of the experiences listed are things that happened to me long ago or that I can give an example that predates what makes the poster feel old.
For instance, if mentioning a TV show that nobody has seen makes you feel old, then what about telling someone about a program you listened to on the radio, because there was no TV? Albums, what about singles only and the record was easily broken (not to mention there was no such thing as stereo.) Chads from computer cards, I remember ticker-tape. They used it for confetti in parades; many news programs used the sound of the ticker-tape to indicate that their news was up-to-date and in fact an expression meaning brand new was “Right off the ticker-tape”.
Becoming a (step) grandparent at age 35 (and twice more before the age of 40) did it for me.
Post #12 in this thread didn’t help either.
The other day I went to pick my son up from his mothers house. He leaves the house from the garage entrance. Since I don’t have a remote; what he has to do is push the button then run underneath the door before it closes.
He does this and as soon as he gets in the car I tell him “Way to go there Indiana Jones!” to which he replies: 
“Who’s Indiana Jones?”
Then there was that time I was talking to a young lady about what music I liked to which SHE responded with “Oh, so you like all the classic rock bands” (sigh) “Yeah, I guess I do…” [scratches head thinking; since when did Metalica become a classic rock band? and Ozzy too?] Jeesh…
I’ll be 34 August 13th.
I’m 45. I don’t have kids, so I don’t get age reminders very often, but when they come, boy do they pack a punch.
Story 1: A few years ago, when I was about 40, I was meeting 2 guys from work, one about 55, the other about 25. The older guy was named Dick and the younger was Dan. I said “It’s Dick and Dan. Say goodnight, Dick”, and the old guy said “Goodnight Dick”, and soon we were doing all sorts of riffs and laughing like mad. Meanwhile Dan is looking at us funny, wondering if he’s hooked up with two loonies.
I asked him if he had any idea what we were talking about, and he said “no.” I asked “Laugh-in?” and he said “no clue”. I tried “Rowan and Martin?”, and he still said “no clue”. He’d never heard of the show, any of the actors, any of the characters, any of the lines, nothing. And he was no youngster himself.
That a late 60s TV icon like that show, groundbreaking at its time, could disappear so totally without a trace that he’d never heard of it was surprising. And it aged me a bunch.
Story 2: A couple of months ago my firm hired a new receptionist, her first job out of college. She was darn cute and I haven’t aged a bit since college, so I was thinking all sorts of very friendly but impure thoughts (and no, she doesn’t work in my chain of supervision). At any rate, I found out a bit later I was out of grad school and well into my first tour in the USAF the day she was born. Youch!
The other day I went and saw The Door in the Floor with Kim Basinger and she has age spots. It hurts my brain to realize 9 1/2 Weeks came out almost 20 years ago. It also bothered me that at 50 or so she is still 100 times prettier than I will ever be.
I do all that math with nostalga too. When I was a teen in the 80s I was heavily into the oldies like Jimi Hendrix and the Doors. So according to that math, any kids listening to the Cure now are listening to stuff that’s as antique as the Doors were to me.
I’m finding 33 to be a very distubing year. When Thirtysomething was on the air I watched it religiously and I remember that it disturbed me to see adult females angst over their age. It was one of the chief things that bugged me about the show, that it was about people who acted like they were the only people ever to get jobs, have kids and stop being cool. If I could go back in time and tell my teenaged self not to be such a judgemental bitch.
…whenever Hollywood throws the newest hunk or cutie at me, and instead of thinking, “Oh! He’s cute!” I think, “He seems like a nice young man. I hope he’s saving his money…” :eek:
(Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Heath Ledger, Elijah Wood, etc.)
Last year the five year old flower girl at my wedding sent us an invitation to her high school graduation. :dubious: I’m not that old! Am I?
What a coincidence – a dear friend of mine was telling me her “I’m old” moment last night. She has beautiful blond hair that she has worn straight and long for a number of years now, sort of a hippy-chick look. She had a fab new haircut last night, which I complimented her on, and she said she really liked it but the hip young sylist had made her feel old. She told the stylist, “Cut it all off; I’m sick of looking like Jan Brady,” and the stylist asked, “Is Jan a friend of yours?”
We are 35. Sigh.
My latest moment happened a couple of weeks ago. While driving my kids home from the water park, I noticed that truckers were checking us out. I’m in my swimsuit and shorts, and my kids are still in their suits. I was humming and happy that I still had it, when I turned around and realized my 11 1/2 year old daughter (who looks 15) was stretched out across the back seat asleep and it was HER they were checking out, not me!! To make matters even worse, she is my YOUNGEST child! Yeah, I felt like a :wally When we got home and I told hubby what happened, he offered to make me a sign that says “She’s only 11” to put in the back window of our car
I’m with you on that!
The ring-bearer at our wedding was a nine-year-old girl.
One day last year I was over at the house of my former best man, watching a video and enjoying a pizza, reminiscing over the wedding day, and he casually said “How’s that chick who carried the rings doing… She was so HOT!” I gave him a sideways glance and said “Did you know that she was only nine?” His jaw dropped.
Of course, she and her family had come from Brazil to participate in our wedding, and many little girls there don’t dress like little girls – he thought she was fifteen or sixteen.
Anyway, we visited Rio last summer. We stopped by Prescilla’s mother’s home for a visit – the child had fulfilled his very words and become a seriously hot woman. She was in her second year of law school.
I asked her to pose for some glamor snapshots to show my best man. When we got back to the States, I visited him and showed him the pictures of the grown woman who he had lusted after when she was a child. Although he did agree that she had developed into quite an attractive woman, he very quickly changed the subject.
Me? I’m not old.
But the other day I ran into a woman I used to know in high school back in the early 80’s, and man, did she look old…like…40 or something like that.
Really old.
I’m 51.
My residence has become a college student ghetto, and I socialize with’em a bit, so I get a lot of those missed references and realizations that they’ve still got too live as long as they’ve already lived and half of that again before they’ll have my perspective. Interestingly, they listen to a lot of the same music I did when I was in school.
A few weeks ago, my neighbors had a good old college style blowout, and I was outside talking to some of them when the police arrived. The first cop that walked looked at me and said, “What are you doin’ here?”
One of my friends referred me to his dermatologist the first time one of those odd older person things grew. I’ve been back. My company pays for an annual physical, and wants me to take it.
All the young Turks started letting me off the elevator first a few years ago.
Recently I was talking with a friend and his college student daughter. I mentioned (no cite, I haven’t researched it) that I’d been told that a high percentage of those getting corrective eye surgery are right back where they were in 15 years. She said, “Fifteen years? What are you worried about?”
Maybe I’m not going to have kids after all.
I agree with you, HOW THE HECK IS SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT AN OLDIE? That’s a song my 20 year old friend listens to. That’s even a song I listen to!