21 Things That Make Me Feel Old

1. If I go out drinking both Friday and Saturday night, I wake up Sunday morning looking more ragged and anguished than Tom Hanks towards the end of Cast Away (right around the part where he’s lost any semblance of sanity and you’ve become pretty sure he’s had sex with Wilson).
2. Songs that I can remember hearing for the first time are now played on Classic Rock stations.
3. My technological awareness peaked in 2009. When I attempt to operate any electronics made in the last three years, I look like a chimpanzee that’s been handed an Etch-A-Sketch and asked to draw something other than stairs.
4. I just moved into a new (and particularly depressing) age bracket on most surveys/censuses that lumps me in with people whom I consider to be way too old to ever have fun anymore.
5. I still think asking, “A/S/L?” is a valid way of beginning any internet-based communication.
6. Looking at recent pictures of the Hanson brothers.
7. I recently saw a commercial that I thought was an ad for some new special effects laden summer movie. It wasn’t until the very end, when the PlayStation 3 logo appeared, that I realized that the ad was actually for a video game. An inability to differentiate between video games and movies is a problem that, until recently, only happened to my mom. In my defense, the TV was far away, I had a smudge on the left lens of my glasses, and that was one crazy-ass looking video game.
8. Speaking of summer movies, can we turn down the volume in the theater a little bit? Just a tad? This would be greatly appreciated, particularly during scenes when twenty-story high robots are using intricate karate movies on each and each of their punches sound like a grand piano being dropped onto a busy freeway; likewise for horror movies where every scare is accompanied by the sound of old subway brakes.
9. Facebook keeps informing me that many of my old college acquaintances who used to be too incompetent to pass Intro to Spanish are now successfully employed and getting married.
10. The car I’ve owned since high school is now legally old enough to vote. Granted, it was a little past its prime when I got it, but watching it slowly fall apart serves as a distressing metaphor for my own aging. Yet, I refuse to replace it because it’s one of the few remaining vestiges to my pre-college years. Unfortunately, it isn’t old in a cool, vintage way, but in a “Wow, how does that pass inspection?” way.
11. I still think music videos are the coolest things ever and I’m not sure why they ever stopped being popular.
12. I’m convinced that every time I learn a new piece of information, an old one falls out of my brain forever. Unfortunately, the new information is usually something like “Andre the Giant supposedly drank 156 beers in one sitting,” and the old, lost information is my online banking password or how to perform basic math.
13. I’ve outlived James Dean, Biggie, Duane Allman, Buddy Holly, and Joan of Arc.
14. Sidney Crosby, who has been the NHL’s biggest star for seven years now, is two months younger than I am. Current rookie MLB phenom Bryce Harper, who already has seven home runs more than I ever will, was born in 1992.
15. The Miami Heat (created in 1988) and the Oklahoma City Thunder (moved from Seattle in 2008), the two competitors in this year’s NBA Finals, did not exist when I was born. So not only am I older than many of the players involved, but I’m older than the actual franchises themselves.
16. Seeing my friend’s youngest siblings, whom I have always thought of as eternally childish and innocent, out (legally) at the bar.
17. Whenever I see a particularly diverse group of friends, I make cynical, outdated references to the Burger King Kids Club. Well, this one makes me feel old and kind of racist.
18. I actually like “cool” bands again, but only because by the time I finally hear about them they are so far past being cool and/or trendy and/or hip and have fallen so far outside any realm of appreciation, that they have gone full-circle and become cool to listen to again.
19. I am overcome with anxiety by things that seem vaguely dangerous, even when they don’t involve me. For instance, I can’t watch Cash Cab without worrying about everyone involved, as hosting a game show while attempting to drive in NYC traffic seems inherently irresponsible and unsafe. I tend to watch with my hands half-covering my eyes, muttering things like “Keep your eyes on the road, Ben Bailey!” or “I would really be more comfortable right now if he would just stop turning around in the driver’s seat.”
20. I’ve realized that at some of my more recent jobs, there hasn’t been that one weird guy that everyone gossips about because they’re a little too old to be working there. Then I realized I was that guy.
21. I have an overwhelming urge to sit on my (nonexistent) porch all day, drinking and yelling at passing kids to stay off my damn lawn.

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