Just When Did You Get Old?

[sirhenry]

When I went deaf.
And I started to go bald.
And all my teeth fell out.
And I got fat and out of breath when climbing stairs.

So March 2015.

Spoiler alert

_{And I was only 55 at the time.}

[close]

[flotemysost]

I think for lots of people, as a child you're desperate to be older and enjoy all the teenagery young adulty things, so once you finally reach that hallowed stage you relish being the part of "the youth" and comfortably just assume you count as a "young person" for ages, and then suddenly one day realise that there's a whole load of other "youth" who are actually a good few years younger than you, with their own references and tribes and habits which you're locked out of because you're fucking OLD now.

I've had this a few times recently when reading about "Gen Z vs. Millennial" stuff (a lot of which is arguably invented clickbaity fluff), and getting disproportionately defensive about it in my head. WHY ARE THEY MAKING FUN OF US FOR TALKING ABOUT "ADULTING", YES IT'S A STUPID PHRASE BUT COME ON, WE BECAME ADULTS IN A FUCKING RECESSION AND WE DIDN'T GROW UP WITH #METOO AND PEOPLE TALKING OPENLY ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH LIKE THEY DID, WE'RE JUST TRYING TO GET BY AND MAKE LIGHT OF OUR SHITTY PROSPECTS AND YET THEY JUST MOCK US WITH THEIR TIKTOKS AND CENTRE PARTINGS yeah whatever Nan.

[bgmnts]

Either 17 or 25.

[Emma Raducanu]

Probably around 26. I went camping in Lithuania with my new girlfriend and complained to her about the large group of teens nearby making noise. I thought she'd agree but she just said something like 'they're young and just happy to be together' and it sent me into 15 minutes of deep depression.

We bought our house when I was 29 and that's when I really started the ageing process. There's no place I'd rather be than our garden with a cup of tea.

[Buelligan]

I think for lots of people, as a child you're desperate to be older and enjoy all the teenagery young adulty things, so once you finally reach that hallowed stage you relish being the part of "the youth" and comfortably just assume you count as a "young person" for ages, and then suddenly one day realise that there's a whole load of other "youth" who are actually a good few years younger than you, with their own references and tribes and habits which you're locked out of because you're fucking OLD now.

Heheh.  When I was six and a half, my little brother, sister and I were made to tidy our things into our dedicated toy boxes.  There was dispute over the ownership of a birthday card lying there. 

I said that it was my card because it said Happy Birthday now you are 6! on it and I was the only one of us over six.  I was also the only one who could read, hence the debate. 

They griped about me being the eldest and always ahead and I told them, one day, they would be very glad indeed that my time was running through the glass ahead of theirs. 

I think I'll leave a little note about that, along with the card, so's they can laugh or fight about it when they post me back to God in my little box.

[Johnboy]

When I wondered who the old guy was ahead of me in the queue in the supermarket and then realised he was someone two years behind me in school.

And I need my reading glasses for a LOT of things now.

[Thomas]

Thomas is 42.

Been CaBbing for almost a decade.

40 is basically 50, and 50 is dead. Whereas 39 is like 35. 35 is practically 30. 30 is 20. You know?

[Icehaven]

When I wondered who the old guy was ahead of me in the queue in the supermarket and then realised he was someone two years behind me in school.

I went to an old friend's wedding reception about 7 or 8 years ago when we were all in our early-mid 30s. At one point I was chatting to someone from the group I'd been good mates with when we were late teens/early 20s but hadn't really seen since, and I asked after her brother and his wife as they were supposed to be there and I'd been friends with them too, but I hadn't seen them yet. She looked slightly awkward and gestured across the table at the two apparently middle aged tired looking people sitting right next to me. They looked a decade older than the rest of us and completely unrecognisable, other than having 2 kids I've no idea what happened to them. I think your 30s is when you can literally see the difference between parents and non-parents though, it visibly ages a lot of people.

[chveik]

that surrealist meme thread

[Bence Fekete]

When the Debenhams catalogue stashed under my bed became a grandma to 5 Instagram influencers

[Noodle Lizard]

A was riding on the top deck of a bus not too long ago when I got annoyed by a group of teens larking about at the rear. Eventually I shifted downstairs then the realisation dawned that I had become the sort of crusty old git that got worked up at teens being teens and even travelled downstairs on a bus!

Christ. That was me when I was about 15.

[bgmnts]

Yeah I'm surprised at how carefree and conventional CaB youths were.

[shiftwork2]

When I was standing in a busy Tube train, looked around me and decided that greater than 50% of the passengers were younger.

When Chart Music Podcast strays beyond 1988 and my heart sinks a bit as it's 'too modern'.

Of course this all coupled with the idea that I haven't really done anything or properly got started yet.

[Schmo Diddley]

When I noticed my forehead was where my fringe used to be.

[Kankurette]

When I realised I was older than every Premier League player. The commentators constantly referring to any player 30+ as "an old veteran", "coming to the end of his career", "incredible that he's lasted the full 90 minutes at age 36" etc doesn't help.

People in their 20s who have never even heard of Bruce Willis or The Stone Roses or any other pop culture things which haven't been popular in the 2000s and just look at you blankly when you mention them.

Also, realising that the old biddies you see on the bus were actually the same age as I am now (42) when Britpop was going on.

Me too. I'm older than most of the Everton squad and about the same age as some of the younger managers out there. And most of the players i grew up with are pundits, coaches or managers now. Britpop is as long ago to me now as the Beatles were in the '90s.

The hospital where I worked having teenage patients who were born after 2000 also made me feel old.

[Billy]

Most recently it was when I found out my twenty-something friends didn't know what year 9/11 happened, what decade Mr Brightside got released (they assumed 1980s), what country the Arctic Monkeys are from (they thought United States) and that said band had any hits before 2013.

Further back to that it was when I turned 25 and was working in a cinema with 18 year olds who would then have been born in 1996, meaning the music that reminds me of drunken uni nights reminds them of finishing primary school.

[buttgammon]

The combination of turning thirty and teaching undergraduates has done this for me in the last few months. I'm simultaneously having to contend with a load of young adults who have drastically different reference points to me while also enduring the first visible line on my face and an increasing number of grey beard and body hairs.

I love teaching online because it means I don't have to see their weirdly big trousers, the sight of which makes me feel ancient.

[shiftwork2]

turning thirty

Oh, my sides.  Are you here all week?

I was actually furious when I turned 30.  It was an existential birthday where I wasn't totally sure if I was alive or not.  But nothing was as bad as 23.  I refused to be 23.  My friends at the time had organised a night out at a veggie Indian in Stoke Newington but I wouldn't come out of my room.  At first anyway.  In the end I had a tasty banana curry.

[Noodle Lizard]

Discovering someone in my circle of friends didn't have any memory of 9/11 (which is apparently what qualifies you as a "Zoomer").

[flotemysost]

I was actually furious when I turned 30.  It was an existential birthday where I wasn't totally sure if I was alive or not.  But nothing was as bad as 23.  I refused to be 23.  My friends at the time had organised a night out at a veggie Indian in Stoke Newington but I wouldn't come out of my room.  At first anyway.  In the end I had a tasty banana curry.

I had a bit of a breakdown just before I turned 30, which annoyingly wasn't actually to do with turning 30 at all, it just happened to coincide with the event, but obviously everyone thought "oh here we go, another basic bitch freaking out about the big Three Oh, cry me a fucking river".

I was born in 1989 which, as someone helpfully reminded me the other day, means I've lived in five different decades now. Anyway I don't care, the Eighties will always be twenty years ago. And the Nineties were the last decade, etc. etc.

[peanutbutter]

My dad dying in my early 20s was when I realised I was already pretty old, not just in that happening but how involved I was in managing the aftermath and all.

First time a relationship with someone who I liked ended and my response was something not too far from "meh, there'll be another one".

Last year I started having conversations about mortgages a lot.

[timebug]

When bits of your own body start to betray you! When something you have always taken for granted,starts to become an effort.

[Norton Canes]

There's 'mental age' and 'reading age'. Is 'social age' a thing? Mine's about 14

[Captain Z]

.

[Endicott]

A few years ago, we had a student lodging with us. They were a quiet bookish sort, so we didn't have the expected generational disputes - no partying for three days straight, while I grumpily yelled at them to turn down that racket. They did, however, introduce me to the concept of Let's Play videos: voluntarily watching someone else (usually some witless little berk) play video games. Apparently this was what the yoof called entertainment. I walked away, utterly baffled.

When I was 15 (1979) I would stand in the snooker hall looking over the shoulder of my mate while he played Space Invaders or Defender with zen like perfection. He must have put a lot of 10ps into those machines to get that good. If I still played games[nb]stopped when I was about 30, to bring myself back on topic[/nb] then I reckon I'd quite happily watch people playing them on youtube.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

There have been numerous times when I've realised that I'm fossilising, but one particularly disturbing example was the dawning realisation that the vaguely familiar bloke with greying hair standing in the supermarket queue was the son of someone I was at school with.

[The Culture Bunker]

I'm in the last days of my 30s, which does suggest collapsing into middle age, but I think I've always had an "old" mindset in some ways.

- As a teen, I found Britpop juvenile nonsense with pretty much no merit and would say things like "Blur? Just ripping off the Kinks and XTC. Oasis? Just a shite version of Slade".
- By the time I was 20, I was completely fed up with going for a "night out" and much preferred staying in with a few beers and a film/Playstation. Gigs and pub quizes aside, I think I've been out for the night socially about five times in my whole 30s, I think all when somebody I didn't mind so much that I worked with was moving on. Though I did quite enjoy going to my local to watch the football, because it's 80% people over 60 and for whatever reason, I find it easier to talk to them.
- After graduating, I resolved to never again houseshare, because I hated living with other people my age so much. Too much noise and mess.

[Hey, Punk!]

I have been informed that I am old indirectly. I am currently at Uni (I'm 26) and, during a trip to Hereford Cathedral, a girl behind me was talking about a 'mature' student who was '24!!!!', to which her companion replied 'Wow, that's so old!' without a trace of irony.

[Jockice]

I have been informed that I am old indirectly. I am currently at Uni (I'm 26) and, during a trip to Hereford Cathedral, a girl behind me was talking about a 'mature' student who was '24!!!!', to which her companion replied 'Wow, that's so old!' without a trace of irony.

That's not as bad as the lovely lass who cuts my hair laughing about a bloke who works in the same building trying to chat her up, adding: "And he's old enough to be my father!" He's actually a year older than me..

Mind you, the first time she cut my hair was about nine years ago and we had a conversation about that day being her sister's 26th birthday and she couldn't imagine being that old. Well she knows now, as by my calculations she's now at least 30. Happens to us all. Unless we get stabbed to death with a pair of hairdressing scissors.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I remember a brief discussion a friend and I had over whether we should book tickets for Reading Festival that year. We both quickly decided that it seemed a bit childish.

28 23 years old, I was.