I will be the first to say that I never signed up for this getting older crap. For the past few years I think about my age and I think to myself, "What in the world happened? When did I get old?" Since I have turned 30, it has all been downhill. It is hard for me to believe that it has been nearly 10 years since I graduated college and that I have been teaching for just as long. I feel like I am stuck in this post-college phase in which I am just an extended college student. I still feel as if I should be in my 20's and I don't think I have changed much but slowly my hair turns grey and more and more parts of my body ache when i do the electric slide at the school dances. In the Cha-Cha Slide when it says, "How low can you go? Can you go down low?" I have to admit that I have no problem going down squatting lower and lower but it is the getting back up that is becoming harder. I have even started lying about my age. I think I might just be 29 for the rest of my life.
For my life it seems you look forward to get older - to be that next milestone age. First it is 16, then 18 and then 21. Once you hit 21 that is pretty much it, unless you count 25 when your car insurance might go down. Then once you turn 21 and graduate college you are so consumed in finding a job and starting a career that you fail to realize that you are slowly aging. Then somewhere through my mid-20's I still felt young I kept inching closer and closer to the age of 30. Now that 30 has come and gone, I no longer feel young. I miss those college days in which you would just hang out and have fun to endless hours of the night/morning. I miss going out every Friday and Saturday and dancing with my friends. Now my Friday and Saturday nights are spent watching HGTV and the occasional *late night* out with friends. Note: *late night* is now approximately 11 o'clock or as late as one can physically stay awake without falling asleep on your friends couch.
What also puzzles me is what to wear. I was never really that fashionable in high school and for that matter, college. But my senior year I started (or thought so) to dress a little more fashionably. I shopped American Eagle and loved it - fairly good deals on sales and everything fit me well. Well, I still shop there and am constantly asking myself the question - Should I stop? Am I too old? When is the point that you realize that you no longer can wear an AE polo? I mean I am still wearing my polos that I bought back in college 10 years ago! ha! It still looks good. Do I now start buying IZOD golf polos? I guess this is the last part of staying younger that I can control. If I buy from AE then maybe I AM younger, psychologically speaking.
The other aspect is getting older is the realization that your family is as well. The older I get means that one day hopefully not in the near future my mom, brother and grandmas are aging as well. This bothers me the most. With the loss of people early on in my life, I can deal with death quite well but the more I think about it as I am older the harder it is to deal with. With both of my grandmas in good health and in their 80's I know time grows shorter and shorter. My grandma Kirk always makes me laugh and has no problem talking about her death. She has her obituary written, songs picked out for her funeral and everything strategically and methodically planned out on her bulletin board for all of us. We laugh at it. I guess it is our way of not thinking about it. She also has post-it notes behind items in her house with names that the items go to in our family, whether it be my mom, my brother or myself. It is humorous and we often joke about it. But the truth of the matter is that I more and more worry about this. I am very close to both of my Grandmas and to think about not having either one is unbearable. For the last two years I keep thinking about a letter to write to both of them, expressing what both of them mean in my life - something I wish I would have done before my Grandpa passed a few years back and it is something I regret. I always ask myself, "If only.." I wish I would have spent the time to sit down with my Grandpa and just asked him about his years in the war and gotten to more about him. So why don't I do that with my Grandmas? Is it to avoid the situation all together? I don't know but I keep putting off this letter. I keep putting off telling them how much I appreciate them and what they have meant to me throughout my years and how I appreciate them for what they have done. They truly are special. Now if I could actually tell them this.
Oh how it would be great to turn back the clock - the younger days when I worried more about more about a zit on my face than worrying about more serious things.
