When Did I Get Old?

by | Mar 10, 2016 | Self Awareness

I have a question that has been bothering since I woke up this morning. It’s not a question that is easy to answer nor is it a question that has been posed to be by others.  It’s a difficult question nonetheless – when did I get old?

I don’t feel old mind you; in my mind I am still the spritely young man I was when I graduated college and entered the works force but I catch myself doing old people things.  For example:

  1. I get upset when I see people wearing hats in restaurants
  2. Yesterday I asked my wife, “When did women start wearing pants with holes in the knees become a thing?” Her response was “You live under a rock.”
  3. I sometimes wear Khaki pants
  4. I find myself criticizing my children for their taste in music
  5. I say things to the younger people in my office like, “You don’t know how good you have it. Back in my day, I had to check crosstabs with a ruler and a pencil.”
  6. I wake up my kids by saying, “Rise and shine.”
  7. I’ve been known to grab a handful of the free mints that some restaurants leave on a table near an exit
  8. “Because I said so” would be in a large and bold font in the center of a word cloud visualizing the phrases I repeat most often to my children
  9. I frequently point out problems but fail to provide solutions
  10. And the piece de resistance – I keep a blog about a girl whose incessant talking on the phone in public bothers me to no end

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen of the jury; ten pieces of evidence that I have become an old man. For the life of me, I cannot pinpoint when exactly this happened or why this happened. Perhaps it’s like the lesson learned by the Velveteen Rabbit; you just become (old). But like the old Oil of Olay ad which had a model stating; “I don’t want to grow old gracefully, I intend to fight it every step of the way,” I intend to fight my premature aging.  I am now challenging myself to engage an 8 point plan to bring back my youth. I will…

  1. Be more open to youth culture, even if it means seeing twenty somethings wearing winter hats in restaurants in the middle of the summer and women who wear holey clothes
  2. Become more open minded in the way other people dress
  3. Be more modern in the way I dress
  4. Be more open to my children’s music (except One Direction. I fucking hate One Direction.)
  5. Make my kids set their own alarms so I am not tempted to say, “Rise and Shine” at 6:15 every morning
  6. Take no more than three mints from the basket
  7. Attempt to explain myself before jumping to “Because I said so”
  8. Not criticize anything without being prepared to make a recommendation for how to improve it

I will do all of these things, but I won’t give up The Trains of Our Lives; it’s just too damn funny.