Things that make me feel old.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m not old. At least, I don’t think I am. But there have been a few things lately that have started to make me FEEL old.

I was searching through Amazon for a DVD collection of all the seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. One of my favorite shows of all time (definitely my favorite “Not-Written-By-Aaron-Sorkin” show), it seems like only yesterday that I was waiting eagerly for the first episode to start. Before then, I’d been a fan of TOS, but this… this was cool. This was MY generation’s look into the future.

And now I see that it premiered over 18 years ago. A full “legally able to vote and join the military” person ago. Good grief, that makes me feel old.

So does seeing hearing the music that was so cool and fresh in high school suddenly being touted as “classic”. Or hearing the DJs refer to one of them as a “blast from the past”. Or walking past a boutique and seeing clothes I would easily (and proudly) have worn in high school tagged “Retro”.

Or watching the major events of my childhood become the “Where Were You When Kennedy Was Shot?” of today… “Where were you when Lennon was shot?” “When the Challenger Went Down?” “When the Wall fell?”

Knowing my sisters, who are a decade and more younger than me, are in college, being real live adults. The sisters whose diapers I changed. The sisters who I had to cancel dates for because I had to babysit them. The ones who called me “Mommy” half the time because they couldn’t fathom someone so much older than them being the same as them.

And today, my first born child turns ten. An entire decade ago, I was giving birth to my first child. 10 years ago, I was wondering what it was going to be like to have him start kindergarten. Now he’s in middle school…

Middle school! I was in middle school just yesterday… at least, it feels like yesterday. It can’t have been that long ago that I was sitting in Spanish class, staring dreamily at Dion’s back and wondering if he’d ever ask me out… Or sitting in front of my tape player, patiently hitting pause - rewind - play - pause - rewind - play so that I could get all the lyrics to “Can’t Touch This” (yes) or “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” It can’t have been that long ago, because I still remember the words! (My my music hits me, so hard…) I can still remember every crease and wrinkle in my Kirk Cameron posters hanging over my bed; every goofy thing I wrote on my paper-bag bookcovers. Spending most of my free time at home calling up BBSs and playing games like Global War or Legend of the Red Dragon, or being goofily proud of myself because they gave me my own echo because I generated so many messages… How can the things that just happened suddenly be nostalgic? The Commodore 64 that I lamented for not being as cool as everyone else’s 286s is now something I would love to have back, even now when my refrigerator has more computing power.

Funny, how romantic it all seems when you look back on it, when at the time it all just seemed… mundane and pointless.

2

I’m not old (still in my 20s!) but the first time I felt old was when the minister was having a children’s service one Memorial Day a couple years ago and made a comment about none of the kids - some of whom were ~10 - were born for the first Gulf War! That was such a big event in my childhood that it was hard for me to believe that these kids were too young to remember it!

3

My friends kid just got his drivers permit. Wh

It seems like such a short time ago me and his Dad were begging for a ride to the mall so we could look at the new cassettes and go shopping for acid washed jeans wearing our mullets.

Staying up late to watch Friday Night Videos of ZZ Top and this new Madonna chick. We had heard of this M-TV thing but didn’t have cable in our area.

For the record, that not a small cluster of grey hair in my beard, it’s a dribble of foam from my cappichino, yeah that’s it. That’s the ticket.

4

Reaching into the little pidgeon holes to look at the 8-Track cassettes at Ayr-Way, then Zayres, then Target. No Evil Empire back then. K-mart was actually a decent place to shop. We couldn’t have pronounced Meijers even if they were around here.

My first experience with feeling old came about 6 or 7 years ago in the form of a cliche: I found my grade school lunch box in an antique shop. It was a Disneyland lunch box and still had my Steve Austin sticker on the side. I thought about forking over the $8 it would have taken to reunite myself with this piece from my past, but what the hell would I do with it now? I set it back on the shelf, walked away and never looked back.

Later I found out my mother had sold a bunch of stuff to the same store earlier that week, and to be fair the lunch box was kind of old when I got it, but still.

Ahh, Friday Night Videos, excuse me, I have to take my pills now.

5

I just turned 30 and normally don’t feel terribly old, but every now and then, something hits me. Like having to explain to my friend’s kids that once upon a time, whenever you wanted money, you had to actually go into the bank.

Does anybody remember the days when HBO used to show videos between movies?

6

The Gulf War. Hah! I have an entry in my sketchbook about it. And that was sketchbook #27! I have sketchbooks that are 7 years older than that. And I had already started university then!

7

[James Kirk=] I feel young! [/James Kirk]

No, seriously, and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Perhaps because I refuse to grow up.

But there is one thing that came close to making me feel this way. The first time a teenager called me, “Sir.” :mad:

8

The recent remakes of movies that came out when I was in High School.

9

Coming home from Mom’s at Thanksgiving I was listening to an oldies station. They played a song that *in *my youth would have been played on an oldies station, then they played a song *from *my youth.

10

I get many soundtrack cds at work.
I was looking at the back of one, and not only did I not recognize the names of the songs, or the names of the bands, I couldn’t even tell which was the list of songs and which was the list of bands.
You Suck…Creepin’ me out
Death by Celebrity…Sugar Toes
Nee Socks…Smell the Glove
A few weeks ago, I came home and my apt was really hot. (boiler heat, I don’t controll) So I took off my shoes and pants and put on some shorts and changed my shirt and then there was a knock at the door. Someone had a package for me and there I was, wearing black dress socks, baggy shorts and a loud print shirt, all I needed was sandals to complete the official old man outfit.

11

Video Jukebox. Yep, I remember that.

How about when they used to show a guy riding a bike through the park? Or show NOTHING but a timer until the next feature?

12

My alarm clock…every damn morning!

13

Children who were newborns/infants around the time I graduated high school will be graduating high school themselves this year. Seems like it was almost yesterday that I was handed my diploma. Gahhh, I’m getting up in years too fast!

14

Tomorrow is my daughter’s 30th birthday. I not only feel old, I guess I really am old.

15

The birthday of the Playboy Centerfold. Every time I see one of those I’m more interested in the birthdate on her Data Sheet than I am in checking out her physical attributes. All the Playmates now were born when I was in grad school. I’ve officially decided not to start feeling old until the first Playmate born after I got my last degree appears.

Even though I’ve received my first AARP letter.

16

I’ve been dealing with younger people calling me “Ma’am” for a long time now, and had kind of gotten used to that. What really knocked me back was when I was talking to an old man, like 30 years older than me, who called me “ma’am”. And he wasn’t a store clerk or anything, just some guy I was chatting with. Now that really made me feel old.

17

So, where were you when the Challenger came down, hit the Berlin Wall, and knocked it over onto John Lennon?

18

Of course you realize we are surrounded by people too young to get that reference.

:eek:

19

What gets to me is that my first students, from back in 1985, are now adults of nearly 40. I’m having kids pass through my classroom now who are the children of previous kids who were my students.

20

Two years ago on Thanksgiving I was traveling to Mom’s and stopped to get a soda. The cute girl behind the counter gave me a big smile as I came in. I smile back and was feeling kinda good until I heard her tell her friend: “That guy reminds me *so *much of my dad!”