all the ways I am old
Time marches towards the inevitable, and the side result is, I’m getting damn old.
Okay, okay, I am exaggerating.. slightly. I’m not ancient yet. I’m in that baby-boomer-shaking-a-fist-at group known as millennials. (Something something poor, something something avocado toast.) But I constantly look around and go “I don’t get that. Why don’t I get that?” and the answer is just that I’m now too old to get that. What things in particular make me feel that way?
– “On fleek.” No matter how hard I try, I don’t understand what that means. And I get a lot of the lingo, still. Fam, lit, thicc, etc. I’m pretty internet savvy and I’ve always had good reading comprehension so in general, I grok the meanings of slang. But on fleek? I still can’t figure it out. What is fleek?? Why fleek? I don’t know. Maybe I could google it and figure it out, but I think that would make me even older.
– All those hashtags. I get hashtags as a concept, obviously, and I use a handful of them in my instagram posts too. In general, they are basically a keyword organizing system. Useful. But why on earth do people use, like, 20 hashtags in one post? Why?? At some point you’re not efficiently organizing stuff, you’re just blasting words until 78.4% of your post is hashtags. Does nobody else find this weird? I mean, you do you, kids. I’ll just be sticking to my modest, 2-4 encompassing hashtags.
– Burping in public. Last year, I worked with a group that included a lot of people in their early 20s. And while working with them, I heard more unrestrained, let-loose burps than in my entire previous existence. Nobody seemed particularly embarrassed to burp in front of all their coworkers, and nobody ever said “excuse me.” They just let loose with burp after burp. You might think it was just that random group of 20-somethings with no sense of public decorum, but no. After I left that job, I still noticed young people in that age range around me burping, in public, with no apologies or attempts to restrain it. ?! Obviously burps are a natural body function, but you can usually keep it under control when in polite company, like at work. You don’t normally just open your mouth wide and let it fly unimpeded, then keep going with your sentence as if nothing happened. I mean, unless you’re a young person today, I guess.
– Vaping. (Enough said.)
I’m sure I could keep going. But it is a singularly weird feeling to look around and realize you’re not a part of the young, trendsetting generation anymore. You’re yesterday’s news.
Well, I’ve depressed myself. I’m going to go eat some avocado toast.
