Something during our socialization made my microgeneration obsessed with age. Maybe it is some subliminal message in Rainbow Brite or My Buddy commercials? I just notice that when I have conversation with my contemporaries (the one closest in age to me being Jennifer Love Hewitt), we are always more interested in talking about our exact age in relation to people older and younger than us.
Whatever the case, I am starting to realize that I am not young anymore; OK, OK I am still in my 20's, so I am young-ish - but I am not young, as in, a kid. I was reading a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which was authored by my new roommate's brother) and read the passage about where Dave the protagonist sleeps with a 29-year old and is intially scared of seeing her weathered naked flesh, and I realized that not that long ago, I thought that way too (well not that graphically). I remember when I started law school, I was so proud of myself for relating for 27 year olds. Now I see 22 year olds as children and 50-somethings as peers (sort of).
Sometimes when I go to the bus stop or when I'm riding the bus I try to guess the age of the riders. And, then I freak myself out when I realize that someone I view as an adult may be my age. I also freak out when I ask someone to guess my age and they guess 32 or something. I also look at my old friends and though I see them the same, when I look closer (both figuratively and literally), I realize that we aren't like we used to. We're more motivated by investments returns over social change (even if we're not Republican) -- at least more than we thought we'd be. We have a few wrinkles. We're the age that some of our professors were. Well, the hot professors, which is good.
Do we always just think of ourselves as kids? Maybe I think about this more because I haven't followed the traditional marriage/kids path. I was thinking about that too - in a conversation with Steph - I pointed out the anthropological reason for having kids is to give life metrics for success and to give ourselves something to live vicariously through. Like, how do I measure concretely success... is it just through career advancement? Is this vicarious success what drives my mother? Is it why she wants me to make more money and have kids -- because it's a metric for her?
I guess I am cool with measuring my success through hedons, rather than dollar signs; for now...
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4 comments:
I'm just glad that I will always be 25.
man, you are old. but i am older. damn.
jennifer love hewitt?
I do now, and always will, just think of myself as a kid! I recall when I was on the swim team and I was in the 9&10-year-old group and I thought the 17&18-year-old-group kids were the oldest people ever. I still have a mental picture of these 17-year-old kids and I still think that mental picture is older than me now. I don't think I'll ever recover from that delusion, even when I'm 80.
Glad you made the switch off of Friendster!
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