I have been having a lot of trouble lately with the fact that I'm getting older. I don't mean, Oh, My Back Hurts older. Or even Old As My Parents older. Really, just Not a Kid or Even a Cool Youth Anymore older. Older like that one student teacher that always wanted to be hip to the young people.
Specifically, I started feeling older when I pulled out some old CDs I made in college (I was a very early adopter of the CD burner, one of the only things I can officially claim to have gotten in on near the ground floor) and the song "Good" by Better Than Ezra came on, and I realized that that song had been old when I put it on the CD, meaning it was even older now. Specifically, it is twelve years old. Meaning it would be in the seventh grade now, if it were a person. It would be learning pre-algebra.
One day, I will have kids who will listen to "Good" and tell me what a humongous spaz I was for ever liking that song (I'm assuming that by then, music will have deteriorated into the sounds of actual murders being committed while the trumpet riff from Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual" is sampled in the background).
Another factor that is really not helping my feelings of oldness is the fact that I am actually looking older, I think. Sort of puffy and wrinkly and my hair is definitely turning white at an alarming rate. I mean, look at me here, circa 1995 (the same year that "Good" came out, not coincidentally), with my brown, brown hair and big full eyebrows. (In an unrelated by very interesting note, that cat that I'm holding was named Sly, and when he died in 1998 my parents had him cremated and the tin containing his ashes sits under our Christmas tree every year.)
All I know is, I only have a few more years before my youthful exuberance becomes "creepy 30-something woman behaving in an upsetting fashion" at parties and sporting events. So I'm going to make the most of them, and spackle every last wrinkle into oblivion (because caked-on makeup is so youthful).
PS: This picture was actually taken for a faux fashion catalog that my friends and I had to put together for French class. So, that should tell you how into fashion I was in 1995. Maybe getting older isn't so bad, after all...
7 pipers piping:
On behalf of creepy 30-something women behaving in an upsetting fashion everywhere, I'd like to say that nothing is more alarming than putting a tin of cat ashes under your Christmas tree for nearly 10 years.
Here's a little "getting older tip": Sunscreen. Use lots of sunscreen on your face. Speaking as a pale whitey, those freckles around my eyes were cute when I was 25, but now they are plotting against me at age 30.
Now I have to go listen to my music that resembles actual murders taking place... er... I mean Eminem.
Adios for now, oldsters everywhere!
Lies! All Lies! Thirty is the new Twenty and right now I look just like I did the day I graduated college.
We could both pass for, say 24. Easy. We're hip. We're edgy.
I thought this wa so funny that I had to read aloud to Thomas.
At least you're not going to be a creepy thirty-something man trying to hit on girls in their twenties... you sexy thing.
Oh, and did your Peruvian girlfriend just give you the Baz Luhrmann speech?
I am so guilty of this now that I teach at a University. Sigh.
How long until discussing America's Next Top Model isn't allowed?
At least I didn't say "If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be IT.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience."
Because then that *would* be theft from Mary Schmich.
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