Am I Starting to Get Old?

I’m not that old – 34 is up there for sure, but its not ancient.

But the other day I was at the grocery store in the checkout line and I see this kid, who’s got to be all of 9 years old, working the bagging line and I thought to myself: “Huh, well its nice to see kids today with a sense of responsibility.”

And there you have it, the crux, the point, the nub… because its a commonly known fact that the very moment you think the words “kids today” you are old, maybe not in body, but in spirit. The only phrase with more cynicism and age inherent in it is: “When I was young.”

I remember as a kid laughing at my father (on the inside, you didn’t laugh at my father on the outside or he’d slap you upside the head just like you deserved) because he wouldn’t let us hook up the Nintendo to the TV because it would ruin the picture tube (In retrospect, now that I have a kid of my own, I realize what my father was saying: “We have one TV in this house, and it is MINE!).

But until recently I hadn’t bothered to learn to text on my phone; and my phone isn’t even one of them there complex ones. If parents ever want to torture their 13 year olds they can have them watch videos of me trying to text. I text like I have 5 thumbs and only two of them are mine.

Right now, on the teevee, Sean Connery is playing the roll of an immortal Russian Spaniard captaining a submarine; I imdb’d him and he’s not up to much these days – do you know why? Because he’s old (soon he’s going to go from dead sexy to just dead thereby putting the final spike in my hopes for a remake of Zardoz). When Sean Connery kicks it, that will start a tidal wave of deaths of all the actors I held dear from my childhood: David Hasselhoff (Knight Rider), Mr. T (A Team), Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver) and Astroboy (Astroboy) – when these people take their dirt naps I’ll know that I’m only a quarter century behind.

Maybe age is all in your head (my back begs to differ); maybe if I think I’m young I will be young.

Intellectually I never really grew up anyway.