Old

I don't feel old. I'm 37 and a half, but I feel like I'm still in my late twenties, and I'm told I don't look older than 30. Every now and then, however, just how long I've actually been alive and doing things hits me. Like this morning, when I was searching for a t-shirt to wear on my morning walk, and I hit on my bright pink Rugby Ball shirt... from 1989.

uga rugby ball 1989

This is probably the only shirt I still have from college—it's held up *really* well, far better than the other UGA rugby shirts I talked about back in 2003—but I hadn't thought about how long ago college was until I was actually out walking. I tried to do the math: How many years ago was 1989? I kept coming up with 17, and that didn't seem right. Was I really old enough to have almost-adult memories from 17 years ago? No, definitely couldn't be right.

I did the math a few different ways ("let's see, 1996 was 10 years ago, and 1989 was seven years before that, so... hm, 17 again"), and then I considered my age. If I'm 37 now, how old would I have been in 1989? Yep, 20. College-age. Somehow, 20 just doesn't seem that long ago, and yet...when I was in college, the Web hadn't been invented yet. No one used cell phones. Only supergeeks used e-mail. I didn't work out or play sports. I was an English major who looked at people like they were crazy when they asked, "so, are you going to teach?", but who didn't have any other career ideas. I didn't want kids, and was ambivalent about marriage (the latter continued to be the case until a few months into my relationship with Al, and the former was true until about a year into our marriage).

It just seems odd now to be able to talk in terms of decades (or even scores!), to think that I was making decisions for myself, that I was running my own life, twenty years ago. Does this mean I am finally a grownup?

Posted by Lori in me, me, me at 12:24 PM on June 14, 2006