You're as old as you feel

"Age is an issue of mind over matter; if you don't mind, it doesn't matter." Mark Twain

"Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you're a cheese." Billie Burke

"We don't stop playing because we grow old...we grow old because we stop playing." George Bernard Shaw

Have you had one of those moments when it hit you like a Ton Of Bricks, "Good God, I'm OLD".

I'm not talking about the half-hearted way we refer to ourselves when out with others. Not the "What, spend the night on the sidewalk outside of some theater to get tickets to some concert? NAAAH, I'm too old for that".

I mean the feeling where you stop what you're doing and can't make your mind go any further because it's still trying to process. And what it's processing is, "Holy crap, I'm OLD!!!"

My own story: Ten years ago I had our family babysitter come for an evening to baby sit Darling Daughter, who was then three years old. At that time our babysitter was in junior high school, 14 years old. Very sweet girl. I had a Huey Lewis and the News CD playing when she walked into the house. I was rockin' out, I kid you not.



The girl walks in and I tried to regain some semblance of being a Responsible Parent (instead of a looney-toon dancing around the kitchen shakin' the junk in her trunk) and I asked her if she liked Huey Lewis and the News. This was 1998. You know what she said??

"No, I'm really not into the oldies".

The oldies! What the heck? That song came out in...let's see...I was living there, and I was dating him...oh my God that song came out in 1982.

BAM. Hit me like a Ton Of Bricks. I'M.FREAKIN'.OLD.

That incident was ten years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Flash forward ten years to 2008.

I ran into our ex-babysitter at our church fair. We chat and catch up, and I find out she and her fiance are now in the process of buying the house next door to us. (We live in the country so 'next door' is a loose term).

In complete innocence I said to her, "Oh cool! When you have babies, Darling Daughter can babysit them!"

The little one she had babysat, now old enough to babysit her OWN children? The look on her face said it all. She had just been hit by the Ton Of' Bricks.

She was 24 at the time.

American Heritage Dictionary...vin·di·cat·ed: to get revenge for; avenge.