Gather 'round, Kids
This old fogie has got some stories
I have become that person who asks new acquaintances their age.
Yes, usually it’s people I assume to be a bit younger than me. Or people who have an ambiguous age to me. No, it’s not really so I can gasp, clutch my pearls, and say something like, “How young you are!” Although, sometimes, and “oof” does fall out of my face. I can’t help it. Society told me I’m supposed to oof. And when people tell me I look younger than my age, I do immediately utter, “I’ll take it.” Again, society!
In general, I don’t mind getting older. Pushing 40 seems insane to me but that’s mostly because of a “where did time go” sort of existential thought process. (Time is a flat circle.) When I look in the mirror, I see all my ages stacked on top of each other. Sometime between 2020 and the last year or so, I really feel like I’ve settled into the features of someone who has almost four decades under her belt. My reflection feels established and yet, everyday it’s like meeting a new person.
In undergrad, when I worked in the Admissions Office and we started to see applications from people born in 1990, all us tour guides had a *moment*—think Jamie Lee Curtis’ “I’m old” in Freaky Friday. See, 1990 is the year my brother was born and I could not fathom that he would soon be following me out of high school halls and into whatever world was awaiting us.
There have been plenty of times in my life where I’ve said, “I’m old” and whoever is nearby disagrees vehemently. Usually because they were older than I was and felt ancient themselves. Once in therapy, I mentioned that I was nearing middle aged and my therapist said, “No, you aren’t. Unsubscribe.” …my therapist unsubscribed from me out loud instead of letting me take one more premature step towards middle aged. (My therapist is only a few years older than I am, why do you ask?)
A strong reaction to aging seems required of us no matter the context.
I don’t ask people their ages to set up my own strong reaction. I ask people their ages because I want to gauge how much of an old fogie I’ll sound like when I tell stories.
Will they look at me like an old man with a long white beard in a rocking chair beckoning them close so I can tell stories that begin with, “Well, back in my day…”? Or will they look at me as what I feel is absolutely my destiny: the cool queer New York aunt who has far too many tchotchkes peppered around her house. (Too lofty?) Will my “wisdom” be valued or will my “wisdom” be met with rolling eyes? There’s no way to tell! But I’m painfully aware of how I tell stories anymore—to younger folx, especially.
There are stories from the 90s I can tell that don’t involve the internet or social media of any kind. I can talk about the big car phone we had in our minivan in case of emergencies. I can talk about summer time trips to Montana, a place where, in parts, it truly feels like time has forgotten to take its next step on the relentless journey forward. I can answer the “where were yous” for the big events that define our time and still crowd our memories. And sometimes, when you do answer that question, the person you’re talking to looks at you like you were present at the backstabbing of Caesar. (Yes, me tu, Brutae.)
Every generation starts to feel like they’re out of the loop at some point. It may take longer now, because there is the internet and there is social media so you can, actually, easily see what the kids are up to these days. With social media, we can visit our past selves, our younger selves much easier now too. Youth, high school, college, early 20s, whatever age starts to feel less far away because we have ways to jog our memories and those ways are usually pretty quick. No waiting until you visit your parents to sort through twenty years of photo albums to find that one photo you were thinking of only to forget who you were telling about that photo in the first place.
Sometimes I tell a story where, halfway through, I start to feel like I’m a VHS tape trying to find a way to be played on a smart phone. I’m all static and the wrong format file.
This is not actually, to me anyway, always an unpleasant feeling. As cliché as it is, it reminds me that I have lived, that I have stories to tell, and, most importantly, I have advice to share that I earned through mistakes, failure, dumb luck, blind optimism, and pure idiocy. You know, the stuff of life! It feels good when I can actually help in some way, even if it’s just to say, “Yeah, I made that stupid mistake too. You’ll be alright. And in the meantime, try an Old Fashioned. It’s my favorite drink.”
The thing about aging is that your own story collection grows just as everyone else’s does. Simultaneously, you become a piece of the stories of others. It’s not all flattering, we all become the villain in someone’s story at some time or another. Honestly, part of the reason why I don’t really do social media anymore is because the ways I had stopped factoring into other people’s stories became clear to me and thus painful. You aren’t usually in control about how your presence plays out in other people’s stories. Social media certainly doesn’t help that. (Let me mourn my dead friendships in peace, okay?!)
To know that I’m a factor in the tellings of other peoples’ lives—the good, the bad, and the ugly—is truly a gift to me. And being able to include others in the telling of my life is so valuable.
But, I’m also not trying to sound like an old Dickens character who haunts an old manor and is too stubborn to eat cake when I tell stories. I don’t want to scare the young folx away. I want them to know that sure, I’ve had a lot of cake and I’ll be glad to tell you about it but I’m also still excited about encountering new desserts. And I want them to be too.
Eat the cake Havisham!
(509), with me always and forever.
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I, too, remember being absolutely horrified by the 1990 birth dates that came flooding in on admissions applications. And again when the signs in liquor stores stated that anyone born in the 1900s were officially of legal drinking age. And then again just recently when I realized my new nephew will likely graduate high school with the class of 2042. FOURTY-TWO!