Ear hair. Honestly, what could possibly be the purpose of the masses of hair that now grow out of my ears? Do woman get it too? I never had hair growing out of my ears before.
The giant eyebrow hairs and the grey pubes, those are weird, but the ear hair thing was a big surprise to me.
And when did putting on shoes and socks become difficult tasks? Now I make odd, old man sounds when I have to bend over for anything. I have to come up for air after the I get my socks on then dive in again for the shoes.
What’s been getting me is all the 80’s - 90’s music showing up in commercials and on the easy listening stations these days. And a year or two ago, all the cool DJs from my youth switched from the hip stations to the old people radio station! What the…? No way, no how should I be hearing Tone Loc on the old peoples station.
Another one I thought of. One recent Saturday I cut the grass, pulled weeds and trimmed trees, then changed the oil in the car and washed it. The ratio of “want to” vs. “have to” on those chores have completely reversed polarity vs. when I was a teenager.
This was my exact “old” moment. I never watched “My So-Called Life” when it was on, so when it showed up on Netflix I figured I’d catch up on a cultural touchstone. Nope. I couldn’t watch more than two episodes. “What the hell is wrong with these dumbass kids?”
…that moment when you notice an attractive woman walking alongside her mother, and realize with horror that the mother now appear the more attractive of the two.
Welp. Close the book on that one. I’m officially old. Yup.
When I was younger it never occurred to me that cities changed very much. The KMart store would always be there. The Walmart would always be there. It’s strange seeing a different business there or seeing it vacant. I used to shop at KMart several times a month and now the building is a run down second hand office furniture place.
Theres some old run down houses along the highway to my hometown. They were always run down but I can remember people living there 25 years ago. Now they got trees and brush in the yard. Some of the houses are about to fall in. The people long dead or in nursing homes.
At a dinner party with a group of folks all in their late 40s or early 50s the conversation slid from 401k vs. IRAs to what prescriptions everyone. My sister piped up in a pause “When did we turn into these people?”
For me it was a three phase process. 1) I knew who everyone in the US magazine “Sequins are in Season” dress editorial was. 2) I didn’t see or listen to the work of all of the people pictured but I knew at least for what the ones I didn’t know were famous. 3) Whatever. I don’t know who they are, who’s a singer, who’s an actress, and don’t care. I’m pretty sure whatever they’re work is I’m not the target demographic for it.
Preach!
Also - my toenails are starting to look like my great aunt’s. I thought hers were
Your post made me feel old because I remember seeing the model for the first iteration of the Columbia logo as a guest on the Mike Douglas show some time in the 70s.
The fact that various heads of state are younger than I am is vaguely unsettling to me.
Meeting with an attorney it came out that he’d graduated from the same college as my cousin - my youngest cousin, the baby of our family. We talked more and it became clear that he didn’t know my cousin because she graduated five years ahead of him. Lawyers aren’t supposed to be younger than my baby cousin.
When we were hearing the news story about the women in the wedding party who died in the limousine fire it occurred to me that my reaction had a lot to do with how I’d feel if I were the mother of one of those girls. When did I start identifying with the grown ups in any given scenario?
When I was in my mid twenties a man I worked with turned thirty. Some time after that we were talking and he said “remember when you were a kid and a grownup would turn down some food and say ‘I like it but it doesn’t like me’ or something like that? I totally get it now.” And now, so do I.
I no longer make menu choices solely based on what I feel like eating. What’s my next stop? Will I be in a car with people I’d like to be friends with after the trip? Will I be able to sleep if I have this now?
“Ready for a refill on you’re iced tea, ma’am?” Will there be a bathroom where I’m going next? sigh
I see family resemblances. I couldn’t understand when they said someone looks like their opposite sex parent, unless there was something obvious like red hair, or green eyes. I can look at my second cousin’s kids and see how they look like their grandmother… my great aunt… who has been dead for 5 years. Now I can look at a young child and say she has her mother’s colouring but her dad’s tall square football player build, while the older brother has the dad’s colouring but his mother’s slender willowy build.
I remember ranting to my mother’s face “How can you not know, not care about who is in the top 40”. Just as Mom answered, it happens, and you are too busy to care.
I’ve never been great at staying up late but now without PVR/internet I would never see Jon Stewart or Steven Colbert. For a few years now I will often fall asleep during the interview, wake up for Colbert, then drift off. Now I don’t manage to stay awake even that late.
And the opposite is also true. How can anyone not have memorized the first four Firesign Theatre albums? I suspect Monty Python is heading that way also.
Much of the rock I listen to is 45 years old now. And there is the time gap. My mother loved Benny Goodman, and told me all about him. That was all prehistoric to me - it was 30 years before. Those conversations happened 50 years ago. I learned about transistors 40 years ago which was only about 20 years after they had been invented. And probably most of the people here hadn’t even been born when I learned how to program.
As a teenager, every time the phone rang my brother, sister and I used to race through the house and leap at the phone to be the first to answer it. The was before cell phones and we only had one phone for the whole house. Sometimes it would get physical if my sister and I got to the phone at the same time.
30-something years later. Can’t be bothered to answer the phone half the time. No interest in just chatting, just get to the point of your call so I can hang up already.
With you here, kind of. I do like my local NPR affiliates, which tend to have longer and more thorough individual news items than the local commercial news stations. Additionally, NPR isn’t just a news station but has regularly scheduled programs devoted to various specialized aspects of news, the economy, politics, and culture. I will say that I find politics in particular more interesting than I ever thought I would. Even more than such “pull” factors, a very big “push” factor has been my now-barely-extant tolerance for the lengthy commercial breaks and limited playlists of most rock music stations. I was there before “classic” rock was classic, and 99% of it was good only the first 1000 times.
Late 40’s my jumping ability started a fast decline, early 60’s I noticed a not so pleaseant odor comming from the privates if I skip my shower one day. Not horrid either but noticeable.
A year or so ago, I realized my then-3-year-old niece grunted and sighed as she climbed stairs because every adult in her life did so, and she just thought that was what you were supposed to do.
And ONE sideburn hair.