Here Are a Few Things That’ve Made Me Feel Old Today

I spent an entire afternoon watching back-to-back episodes of “I Love The 80s” on VH1, waiting for them to mention something, even in passing, that actually mattered to me. I finally gave up in disgust, and rummaged through a closet until I found my tattered copy of the Replacements’ “The Shit Hits the Fans” bootleg. But listening to it didn’t make me feel smugly superior to the mainstream as it’d done so effectively during my teens. Instead, it just sounded hollow and distant, like hearing an echo from very, very far away.

* * *

I was at the grocery store buying wine, and the woman behind me in line said to the register guy, “Aren’t you supposed to check his ID?” They looked at each other and burst into laughter. I laughed along with them, pretending that I was in on the joke. “What, I don’t look like I might be 19?” I asked, winking at them. Later that afternoon, I spent several hours in my bathroom, plucking the gray hairs from my beard with a pair of tweezers.

* * *

I have, on several occasions, glanced at my watch while at a party, and upon noticing that it’s almost midnight, uttered the phrase, “I better get going, it’s a school night.”

* * *

At a dinner party with friends, we began discussing, without irony, the frequency and quality of our bowel movements. We talked about how certain foods – some spicy, some lactose-heavy – have a frightening effect on our respective intestinal tracks, and how satisfying it is to begin each day with a good, solid poop. We then got very quiet and just stared at our hands for awhile, wondering how it had come to this.

* * *

I saw a girl wearing sweatpants with “Juicy” written on the ass. Normally, I try not to stare directly at a woman’s butt, but a random word splashed across a rear end is impossible to ignore. And then I’m transfixed, watching the word undulate as she walks, almost as if it’s being written by an invisible hand. I ended up staring just a little too long, and she turned and glared at me. I realized that she was just 16 years old, and judging from the disgusted look on her face, I was not the intended audience for her butt billboard.

* * *

During a late-night bout with insomnia, I became captivated by an infomercial for a hair regrowth formula called Avacor. At first it was just fodder for comedy, but after the first twenty minutes, it stopped being funny and started getting scary. Around 4am, I finally turned off the TV and raced into the bathroom, where I studied my hairline well into the early morning.

* * *

My mother asked me about a college friend who had recently given birth to her third child, and after learning that her oldest would soon be 8 years old, exclaimed, “Oh my, you’ll never be able to catch up.” I considered saying something snarky, like, “Oh, I didn’t realize it was a race” or, “Don’t worry, I’ll just steal a black kid from Africa like Madonna did,” but somehow I couldn’t muster the energy.

* * *

I had the following conversation with my 12-year old cousin:

ME: “You’ve never heard of cassingles?”

HIM: “No. What’s a cassingle?”

ME: “It’s a cassette tape with just one song on it.”

HIM: “What’s a cassette tape?”

(Long pause.)

ME: “Are you freaking kidding me?”

* * *

There’s this guy I knew, back in my early 20s when I was still smoking a lot of weed, who used to be my “dealer,” for lack of a better word. This dude always had the most primo shit. By far the stinkiest bud you’ve ever laid eyes on. I called him for the first time in well over a decade. Apparently he knows the name of a really good dermatologist, and I have this funky-looking mole that I really should have checked out.

* * *

I reached into the front pocket of one of my jackets and pulled out a handful of hard candy. I have no idea where it came from, or why I was saving it. The last time I’ve even seen hard candy was at my grandmother’s house, who used to keep a big bowl of the stuff on her coffee table for guests.

* * *

When I was 28, the only word that could make me cringe was “nigger.” At 38, the only word that can make me cringe is “cancer.”

* * *

Sitting on a plane, I noticed that the teenage girl seated next to me was still using her iPod, even though the airline attendants had just announced that all electronic devices should be shut down for take-off. I eyed her nervously, and as the plane taxied down the runway, I became convinced that her iPod would interfere with the pilot’s instruments, resulting in a fiery crash. “Can’t you wait five goddamn minutes?” I wanted to scream at her. “I don’t want to die because you need to hear Sexy Back again!” But I didn’t, and to nobody’s surprise, the plane became airborne without incident.

* * *

During a trip to Las Vegas, I helped myself to the casino’s complimentary breakfast buffet, eating several portions of powder eggs, despite the fact that they tasted like warm gruel. When a friend asked about my behavior, I insisted that I had consumed the foul egg concoction “because it’s free” – the same logic, it was later explained to me, used by most of the casino’s elderly guests.

* * *

I flew to Chicago for a reading and learned that Rob, one of my oldest and dearest friends, would be attending. Rob and I had been roommates for much of the early 90s, and I adored his eccentric and sometimes bizarre personality quirks. This was a man who had once wallpapered our bathroom with hardcore pornography, and had ended a performance art show at Chicago’s (now long-gone) Club Lower Links by removing his clothes and masturbating with ketchup and mayonnaise while I covered him with an American flag and sang the “Star Spangled Banner.” After my reading, we went to a nearby bar to drink a few beers and catch up. He was noticeably older and a little rounder around the middle, but just as insane as I’d remembered, rambling about some book he was working on that combined his philosophical musings with crude drawings of muscle cars. My friend Liz joined us, and during the taxi ride back to her apartment, she asked me, “What the fuck is wrong with you friend? Is he always like that?” I just smiled, pretending to share her dismay. But I was secretly comforted by Rob’s stubborn refusal to grow up. Because he hadn’t changed, I reasoned, then maybe I hadn’t changed, either. But the more I thought about it, the more trapped I felt by the circular logic. If I needed Rob to remind me that I’m not old, then I must be old. I was like those aging Baby Boomers, reuniting for one last Big Chill blow-out, reliving their glory days while reminding each other, with just a bit too much forced enthusiasm, that “we’re still crazy after all these years.” I thought about it for awhile, trying to justify how Rob and I were different, but finally just gave up and went to sleep. It was, after all, a school night.

(This story originally appeared on TheNerouvBreakdown.com)