Monday, May 9, 2011

Getting Old - Observations and a Question

Nothing really terrific or funny happened to me today, so I was at odds as to what to write in here. I was walking around, waiting for inspiration to strike when I was struck by a thought, which led to another thought, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on....
The basic 1st thought was about a bunch of observations I have made about myself that add up to one thing: I have gotten old.
Maybe it's really "older",  but it feels old. It was probably a gradual thing, but I never saw it while it was happening, and it did take me a little by surprise. I want to list the observations about myself here, and see if you agree that somewhere along the way I crossed a line into Old.

  • I think my son's cartoons are crap. Some are okay, but there are others where I look at them and just shake my head, saddened by the decline of the art that was the cartoons of my day. Adventure Time. Chowder. Flapjack. No, no, no. Please. Can't we just watch some classic Bugs Bunny, or Pink Panther?
  • I shake my head at a lot of my son's music. Not all of it; there's some stuff out there that's pretty good. but we do fight over the radio when he gets in the car. Never thought I'd do that....
  • Loud motorcycles. I have a motorcycle, but when one goes by and I can still hear it more than five minutes later, I'm constantly asking the people around me "Is that really necessary?"
  • Kids in public. Little kids. Teen kids. Doesn't matter. When they misbehave, I remember that I used to know it was them, all them, and that it was their choice as to how they would act. Now though, my first thought seems to be "Oh my God, what kind of a mother did they have?" Sorry Mom. You were right about that one.
  • Now for the worst one. The topper. The one that started me thinking about all of this. It makes me cringe just to think about it. The other day, as I was delivering my route (I am a mailman, read 'The Set-Up, for God's sake!) I parked my truck and heard some voices. Girl's voices. I looked around, and in seconds I spotted them. Two girls, lying out in the sun on a small roof over an enclosed front porch, facing the street. In bikinis. Small ones. The bikinis, I mean, not the girls. They were younger than me, sure, quite a bit younger, but does noticing all this make me a dirty old man? No, and I'll tell you why. When noticing two itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie bikini clad girls, lying in the sun in a roof in full view of the street, my first thought, my very first thought, was "Boy, I sure do hope they don't fall off. That doesn't look safe at all..." I actually laughed out loud on the street when I realized what I was thinking. Hey, it was either laugh or cry....
So... does all that make me old? Older? What do you think? I'm kind of thinking it does. Every time I notice one of these things, I think to myself "God, I'm old!"

There is one thing, though. One thing that saves me. Sort of.  All this thinking about the way I see things now, and the way it makes me old, or older, spawned a question in my mind. This question is the one thing that pushes me to say that I'm older, rather than just flat-out old.

The question is this:
How old will I have to be before the word "boobies" doesn't make me giggle inside like a 10-year-old boy?

I hope it never happens.

Talk to you later!

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