Growing Up

I'm getting old. I just went to a high school reunion a couple of weeks ago. No, it wasn’t my 10th. That one is ancient history. It wasn’t even the 20th. No, this reunion was to “celebrate” the 25th anniversary of my high school graduation. Twenty-five years. No way.

I’m beginning to realize that getting older is one of those things that just sneaks up on you. I’ve been so busy with the different phases of my life and trying to keep up with everything that it seems like, all of a sudden, I’ve looked around and found I’m in some sort of a pre-AARP middle age “gray area” (pun intended). I know there’s billions of people that have already traveled this road and many more coming up behind, but it’s still new to me and I’m not exactly sure what to make of it yet.

I know I’ve been getting there. I’ve been teaching college-aged students for 11 years now, and there’s been a steady change in age-related milestones for me. First was realizing that I had students that were born the year I graduated high school. At that point, I realized that I was old enough to be their father. But I sure wasn’t used to thinking of myself as being someone who could have a grown child.

I’ve also found out that I’m now a member of a different demographic. An older demographic. No longer the group that wears cool clothes or watches MTV. Now it's the group that is trying to look younger. I’ve noticed ads for things like wrinkle-creams, with women saying something like “I’m 43 years old and I still look wonderful”, implying that it’s a challenge to look good at 43.

I guess it's true. Anyone older than me probably says that I'm still a kid and "just wait 'til you get to be my age", but I really am part of an older generation. A generation that's old enough to have grandkids and college tuition to pay - for our kids. It’s gotten to the point that many of the adult students I teach were born after I graduated high school. And started college. And went into the Navy. It's gotten to the point where some of my students have parents younger than me. What’s next?

I don’t relish the indignities that go along with being middle-aged, like male-pattern baldness, arthritis and other physical irritations, but I guess that’s just part of the price to pay for the privilege of getting to live a long life. Unlike some of my classmates that have already departed this world and the kids dying in car wrecks here and car bombs overseas, I’m one of the lucky ones that gets to live long enough to moan and complain.

Getting older comes with plenty of aches and pains (both literal and figurative), but it sure beats the alternative.

And I’m still smiling.