Heart and Mind

More Typical and Possibly Boring Musings Born of My Propensity to Pontificate on Age Differences

I work next to someone who is twenty-two. That's OK with me, but do you know what makes me feel a little odd? Wondering how she must look at me. I must seem really old and, therefore, really irrelevant.

When I was twenty-two ir twenty-three, I used to look at people that I worked with that were twenty-seven or twenty-eight or twenty-nine and think to myself that they were in a different place than I was. They were still youthful, but not particularly young.

I don't recall exactly what my perception of a thirty-five year old was, but I'm reasonably sure that I would have figured such a person to have at least as much—if not more—in common with my father than me.

How did the twenties become so distant? When you do the math, there's a thirteen year difference between me and the 22-year-old. Thirteen! To her, I must look like what the guy who is two years shy of fifty looks to me. She has no real memory of the time in which I was in high school; she was too young.

Well, it's a good thing that I'm not really the kind of person who cares all that much about coming off as young and cool, because there's no way I'd be able to pull it off convincingly.

I asked her today, "What do you say about us (us being me and another guy my age) to your friends? Do you say, 'I work with these weird old guys?'" She insists that she doesn't say that. She might be telling the truth. Or she might not be. But if she isn't, that's fine. I'm comfortable with that. I would have been the same way, probably.

It wasn't until I was in my later twenties that I started realizing that those dudes who I always thought were old-ish really weren't. In the blink of an eye, I'll be right there at the age I'm looking up at. Time flies.

There's an irony, of course, to the idea that young people see old people as irrelevant and out of touch. It's the older person, after all, who more often than not has the life experience. I own a house, have a family, and have been through tons more stuff than any kid has. Hell, the coolest, most-happening dude in your high school —the coolest A-lister you could imagine—still lived in a bedroom in his Mommy's house. How uncool is that? The only people who thinks young people are cool are people of the same age or younger.

posted by Steve @ 9:18 PM