Hmmm, if age is only a state of mind, why is it that my mind is showing so many distressing signs of aging?
Somewhere around the half century mark we enter the “I remember when” stage of life in which we look back longingly on the good old days and wish we could turn back the clock. In the spirit of that mood of retrospection, I offer my top 10 list for signs that you’re not a young buck anymore.
# 1. You regularly pine for the days when a good mechanic was a forty-something guy who could tell what was wrong with your car just by listening to it rather than a twenty-something kid reading a printout from a computer.
#2. You subscribe to Netflix because you’re hard pressed to find anything you want to watch on the 70+ basic cable channels. But you rarely watch a Netflix movie because it seems like too much hassle to scan through all the selections and make a choice.
#3. You realize you have five times as many friends on Facebook as you do in real life and you can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
#4. You remember when there was only one type of gas, it cost less than 50 cents a gallon and you never had to pump it yourself.
#5. You do two laps of the cereal aisle at the grocery store before resigning yourself to the fact that your choice has to be based more on fibre content than taste.
#6. You can’t figure how you missed the news that stopping at red lights had become optional and use of car horns at intersections had become mandatory.
#7. You remember the two dollar bill and when you could buy lunch with it and get change back.
#8. You buy the chocolate cake at the bakery because it looks lonely and seems to need a good home.
#9. You no longer own a bathroom scale because you’ve come to accept that there are some things about yourself you’d rather not know.
#10. You realize that “10” is nowhere near enough numbers to cover all the things that remind you that you’re on the plus side of 50 and at high risk of becoming cranky, eccentric and irretrievably set in your ways.
Well aged wine is the metaphor most often used to put a positive spin on passing the half century mark. I think it’s time to uncork the bottle and indulge. I need a bit of a buzz to accept the fact that I’m not in the prime demographic for anything anymore
~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.
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Tags: aging · good old days · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · prime demographic · top 10 listNo Comments