The clerk was asking her all the usual questions: address, phone number, date of birth. I'm used to hearing 70-something, or even 80-something, but my ears clicked right over her year. It didn't have any sounds that resonated with me - she was born in a mystery year.
As I continued to stand there and rerun the conversation in my head the clerk asked for her birthday again. And this time I heard loud and clear. Something-something-NINETY. I was shocked. 90!! Oh my God!! Not only do I remember 1990, but I was a freshman/sophomore in high school!!! This wasn't a, "Oh, I remember 1984, cuz I was 9" sort of thing. I was a fully fledged teenager in 1990. Oh, shit, I felt so o l d ! ! !
This is what I was doing in 1990:
Check out that scary-ass van in the background! Who buys that for their kid to drive?! I imagine the back is upholstered with shag carpeting or something.I was going to lunch with Amy Santos (pictured) and Linda Hubbard (her convertible mustang is in the picture). We were probably on our way to Taco Bell where I would have ordered a Meximelt and nachos. Linda would have gotten a bean burrito, no onions, with a soda, and Amy would probably have ordered a Mexican Pizza and a coke. I would have begged for sips of their drinks since my $2 lunch allowance would have only just covered the nachos and the Meximelt. This is what I was doing in 1990.
And that girl was being born.
Fucking nutty. I know it's not an original thought, this whole growing old thing, but boy is it weird to feel it. Maybe it's because I just had a birthday or because Hollis is about to turn 1. I'm also feelin' the whole wrinkle thing. I love 'em and hate 'em. War scars, right? Be proud, blah blah blah. I just can't believe that babies born in 1990 are 18! Holy fucking shit! Where has the time gone? It's like I blinked and the past 10 years have happened.
I had another thought this morning as I was laying in bed while Anthony was waking up Hollis. The internet is to my generation as the television was to my grandparents. Hollis is a DFL (digital as a first language) baby. Everyone in my generation and older is DSL (digital as a second language). He'll never know a world without a cell phone, the internet, texting, flat-screen TVs. Oy! So damn crazy!
Do you realize that pretty soon we're going to stop saying "two-thousand-whatever"? We'll just switch to "twenty-whatever" finally. Twenty-ten, twenty-eleven. Amazing!
Anyway, that's all - I just feel ancient and, ironically, kinda wise all of a sudden. I'm feeling a little bit like a wise, old, badass today - woot! Not bad for a random Wednesday morning!
OMG tell me about it...every fall an email from Beloit Community College circulates among college faculty enumerating just what our entering freshman classes have always and never had in their lifetimes. Here are some choice excerpts from this year's email:
ReplyDeleteThe class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are "wired" and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting.
-Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.
-For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.
-They have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about "nothing."
-Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
Kinda makes you want to curl up in a ball and cry, doesn't it?