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Do you have creaky knees? Are you confused by new technology? Do you rehash the same stories again and again?
In our “60 is the new 40” culture, it’s hard to define old age. But I’ll take a stab at it. You’re officially old if:
· You have a pair of “good scissors.”
· You get inordinately upset if the good scissors go missing. Your world is further rocked when it is revealed that the good scissors are at college with your daughter.
· You become borderline unhinged when Costco rearranges the merchandise. You may even attract the attention of other shoppers as you sigh and make exasperated hand motions, signaling the depths of your despair when you can’t find the cat litter.
· You’re confused when people younger than you reminisce about their teen years. What do they have to pine about? The 1990s were just a few heartbeats ago. These people are children, gosh darn it.
· TV is confusing. Not the individual programs. Just the concept of how TV works these days. Who in your family pays for which streaming services and how you log in. You joke about it, but you secretly find yourself longing for the days when there were three channels and PBS and if you missed a show, you missed it, and you were physically unable to rot your brain away binging an entire season of “90 Day Fiance.”
· You struggle to remember the difference between Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling.
· It takes you three or four tries to log into every single account — of any sort — that you have.
· You spend half your day making lists, and the other half looking for said lists. Grocery lists. Things-to-get-done-this-week lists. Movies and books you mean to get to. Yet every Post-It note gets lost and six months later you find them crumpled in the bottom of your purse or coat pocket and it may as well have been hieroglyphics for all the sense they make.
· You make a big freaking deal over the seat warmers in the car. Because back in your day, when you learned to drive in the Giant Blizzard of 1978, cars barely had heaters. In fact, they barely had seats. Your mom’s 1976 forest green Dodge Aspen was basically four tires and some brakes and an engine that stalled every time it rained. Seat warmers were as futuristic as jet packs and meals in pill form.
· You’re shocked every time someone famous dies. You find yourself having conversations that include the phrase “They’re dropping like flies!” as if the life cycle of celebrities should somehow be different from that of normal humans.
· Likewise, you’re equally shocked every time a celebrity’s age is revealed. (Macaulay Culkin is 42? Eminem, 50? Andy Summers of The Police — 80?)
· You realize that, by your own standards, you’ve been old for at least 30 years, and that fact is strangely comforting. Kind of like the seat warmers in the car, set on high all winter.
Charlotte is a columnist for The Times. You can reach her at charlottelatvala@gmail.com.
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