Those "feeling suddenly old" rude awakenings people talk about...

That wasn't even true at the time the song was popular, though.

Pay phones haven't cost $0.10 since I was a little kid, at least where I grew up.

But now we've got national health care so we can pay for our carpal tunnel injuries from texting too much.

Bah. Wait 'til you're 40. 35 years of skiing. I've fallen on double black diamonds where I was a "gear bomb", sliding down the mountain on my back, headfirst, towards a rock or tree--and came away unscathed. Then I make a stupid fall on a blue run on the second run of the season and tear my ACL.

At least you did it skiing. I dislocated my kneecap trying not to fall on my 3 year-old. AND, I wasn't 40

I dislocated my knee twice in 3 seconds (bitch popped back in and then out!) just turning around! 'course I have an issue with them anyway but...

I've been a lot more careful about it since but walking/running regularly has actually seemed to help with the chronic achiness. It's the times I've been slack that things like the weather seem to affect it more.

I often don't know I've hurt myself until much later. Maybe the nerves are getting slow!
A couple of days after shoveling snow in Feb, my left elbow started hurting, then the arm, and now I'm wearing a drug-store brace for tennis elbow to keep the pain down when I move.

Yeah, this kind'a shit is loads of fun.

Talking with your same-aged friends about shit you did when you were younger . . . like, say, when I got out of the Navy . . . and then having the realization that that was twenty five years ago. Oy.

Or even worse, my co-workers and I talking about stuff that happened in the 90s, which to us is basically the same as stuff that happened last week, and then having the new kid in the office (just outta college, all growed up now!) say something like "I think I remember that. I was in second grade."

Oh the pain, the pain.

^That's my brain problem too. Everything from the 90s on seems like it just happened. hell, even from the 80s. Miami Vice still seems fresh and new to me!

Remember watching TV when you were a kid, and a character would talk about something that happened "20 years ago!"? Didn't it make it sound like it was AGES in the past? When I was a kid, WWII was "20 years ago" and required looking up in books to learn about. Fuck, now Desert Storm was almost 20 years ago! I still have VHS tapes of the news broadcasts!

I have this happen to me semi-regularly, since I'm still at the university and I get to see the new freshmen come in every year (although I don't have to teach them anymore).

It doesn't help that my niece and nephew are 19 now. Or that I'm a granduncle (although you can blame my nephew for being "overzealous" on that one).

Even the new grad students are five years younger than me now. Oh wow.

I really like being in the real world now. I'm the young'un now, 90% of the time.

Before that, I was 21, living with 18 year olds (delayed going to uni). Being 23, and being surrounded by 19 year olds, weeping about turning 20? Enough to make you stab a motherfucker. Technically only a few years difference, but the immaturity made it feel like a lifetime. And more importantly, I never got to make jokes about people turning old

On the hot topic of conversation when you reach a certain age... I remember us making fun of the old people at church when they'd go into their "organ recital" every week. Now we've all joined in.

TELL me about it. My niece is married, several of my nephews are married, and I too am a Great Uncle. My parents are Great Grandparents. My freakin' baby sister is a grandmother! Lord love a duck, how did that happen so fast?

It's exponential.......the older you get, the faster time flies by.
Between the ages of 10 and 15 or so seems like a lifetime, with all the drama, adventures, discoveries, etc.

Now 5 years go by seemingly without incident.
It really is pretty weird.

It's because of how long you've lived compared to the time you're measuring. For example, 1 year to a 10-year-old is 10% of his life. 1 year to a 50-year-old is a much smaller percentage. So, by comparison, a year goes by faster to a 50-year-old.

I bet Einstein worked this out somehow....

But it does make sense. Imagine if you were some Bible character living 700 years or so!

I was just reminiscing on Facebook with a friend who moved to Seattle a long time ago. I remember her daughter being in a crib while we were helping her pack and saying good bye. Her daughter also posted in the conversation - she's 27 now.

I'll tell you what. I'm not even quite out of my 20s yet (3 or so months to go!) and I was kinda surprised to get that sudden moment of clarity, and it makes me wonder... If I can get that feeling already at 29 what's it going to be like at 39 or 45 or whatever.

Just got me thinking too of all the things I have experienced that will be lost to those now growing up. Like when my parents spoke of the start of the troubles in '69, or the kennedy assassination, or the moon landing, and I knew nothing of any of it.

I've even already started to see some of that... today's 18 year olds can only vaguely remember a time when mobile phones were not ubiquitous, the same for the internet... most of them only remember Princess Diana's death because it interrupted their children's TV program viewing for a day or two. And what today's 18 year olds remember vaguely, today's 10 year olds, to be adults in 8 short years, won't remember any of at all.

When the babies of today are 18 year old men and women, they will never have known a world in which a black US president was anything other than a fact of history. For better or worse.

I feel oldest after a night of drinking. Ouch. I remember being young and mixing all sorts of liquor, dancing, and generally acting a fool and then waking up in 4 hours and starting my day like nothing happened. No more. Anything over 3 drinks and I'm definitely gonna need the next day off to recover.

We were never drinkers, we used to stay up with the gang until the wee hours on weekends, bullshitting, watching movies, making movies (super-8 FTW!)... 2AM was usual, 4AM on occasions.

Now we nod off a bit after 11. Can't seem to even find any wild oats.

Looking down the barrel of 41 in a few days... between 29 and 39 just happened. I don't dress or look that much different, my lifestyle is still comfortably fun...
But yeah, checking out a 30 year old and thinking she's a bit on the young side is mortifying at times.

Yeah, I remember that in my 20s, we never used to consider even leaving to go out before 9 or 10 PM (except for Happy Hours). Now that's usually the end of my evenings out.

And my daughter thinking that because Taylor Swift's been around for five years means she's practically "classic" "rock".

:dildo: :cunni:

A few weeks ago I was watching The Last Airbender with my dad. He said "It's Saturday night, let's stay up late and watch as much as we can!" because really, it's an amazing show! So I thought "Awesome! We can be up til 4 or something!" and my dad went to bed at midnight.

Notching it up a generation, Dad had one of those moments somewhere in his 70s when he told me to bring my shotgun to the cabin so we could shoot trap together. Hadn't done it in aaaages! I'm guessing Dad hadn't fired a shotgun in many years, 'cause when he took his first shot, he grabbed his shoulder in pain, looked at me in astonishment, and said "You shoot, I'll just throw 'em." He was constantly being amazed how his body was getting less and less cooperative as he aged.

As a son, it always hurt my feelings when I witnessed those moments with my dad.

Yep. My Dad had always been a pretty good shot. So I was a little confused and disappointed when I'd take the M-14 out to the range and he'd tell me to take the M1 too. You should just come along and shoot it yourself, Dad!

I later realized his eyes were such that he couldn't get a sight picture with iron sights any more.

I guess I'm not quite old enough yet to have those kinds of moments.

The closest I get is reading news or articles about political or cultural or other 'historical' stuff that happened in the 90s or early 00s, and I can actually personally relate to it.

Not like all this talk of "the 70s" or "the 50s" that might as well be about the Ming Dynasty or Australiopithecines for all I remember of them.

I got annoyed hearing a coupla girls at work discussing the next time their age would be "even". After enquiring, found out they meant their age would be both the same number (11, 22, 33...). Told 'em to quit bitching, as my next time will be 44, even if I'm a way off that. Still made me think.

As for health, I honestly think I may be in better shape now than I was in my twenties... I started circuit training a few months back. Recovery is likely slower, but I wouldn't have bothered doing the exercise back then.

What really makes me feel old is Ghostbusters.