I don’t know HOW this happened, but I’ve been feeling, well OLD lately! It’s been creeping up on me a few times in the past few months:
1. An 8 year old tells you that you look like the mom from iCarly. This happened over summer. She added to that saying, “but you’re nice.” Umm…thanks?!
2. Names of things change – no more brontosaurus, it’s actually apatosaurus. I’m learning from story time right along with my two and four year old!
3. There are fewer planets: see ya Pluto! I’m not sure where that puts my amazing solo during the “Oh Pluto” planet song during a fifth grade assembly. Somehow I still remember the words (some sung by other dear friends):
“Isn’t it lonely?
To be the only.
The last planet on the rim.
And it ain’t so nice.
Being just rock & ice.
Oh Pluto.”
It goes on to talk more about “from the cold blackness where I sit,” but that’s all I remember from verse two.
4. Your game has declined. For me this means my basketball and volleyball skills peaked 15 years ago! One mean-spirited former colleague once told me that I won’t be able to play basketball and volleyball when I get older, so I should really take up golf. Given that my alumni team took second place in our basketball tournament, I’m STILL managing to play the sport I love. (Cue image of me thumbing my nose at said former colleague)
5. You’re not the youngest at work anymore. I guess working with people almost ten years younger than you CAN make you feel old. They don’t understand your childhood references like He-man or She-ra (obviously an important topic at work) and may not know Axel Rose (true story). I find myself looking at my boss, who is part of my generation, and just smiling at the reaction to some of these “generational difference moments.”
I can clearly remember my first jobs in my twenties. I was the nerdy one showing up with the company issued work badge at the regional office, showing up so early that I had to just sit in the very small lobby, and wait for someone to come and let me in past the key-coded door. That same person who punched in the code and let me in the office area immediately noticed my badge and said, “We don’t use these here.” Rookie mistake.
I remember being SO tired during long work days and afternoon meetings. Perhaps I ate too many carbs and the low lighting needed for Power Point presentations made conditions ideal for some good head-nodding, fighting-a-nap maneuvers. Horrible! I was mortified that others noticed, so I made sure to caffeinate prior to such meetings. I shared this story with some older and wiser friends, and they just laughed, teasing me about being a young’in and remembering those days themselves. Fortunately I outgrew this and adjusted to long work days and meetings of many kinds.
After much learning in my early twenties, I am now comfortably in my thirties. I enjoy remembering those kid-free days of my younger colleagues. Despite my “old feelings,” I wouldn’t want to go back, as I’ve truly embraced all of the roles that are part of me as an individual, wife, employee, and mom.
Do you have “old moments?” How do you cope?
