2 posts tagged “youth”
I was 18 years old and walking home to my apartment on Franklin Avenue in Boise from work as a waiter at Plush Pippin on State Street. As I zipped along the street, Eric, who was Wendy Belcher's boyfriend (my first boyfriend Jerry and I lived with her), was playing football in the field at Boise High and he saw me passing at shouted out: "The Wall fell down, maaaaaan! Those Germans are freeeeee!"
i remember when i was young--in my early 20s--the world seemed stocked full of people who were older than me; i felt as if the "action," so to speak, was all done by "older" people. and everyone was older: waitresses, teachers, hairdressers, newscasters, shop assistants. i could start any new job and feel sure that my boss would be some old man or woman. i remember watching woody allen movies and feeling that the characters were ancient, that the things they were experiencing (love affairs, promotions, divorces, etc) were all things that would happen some day in my distant future when i was old.
tonight, watching woody allen's melinda and melinda (a delightful, if flawed, movie), it struck me that these people are MY AGE! i mean, they are slightly older than me, but i have more in common with them than i would with a group of 21 year olds! when did this happen? i'm only 36, it's true, but when did everyone "grow up"?
if the tv happens to be on a soap opera during the day, i wonder to myself: when did the actors on these things get so YOUNG? when i walk around mcgill, i am often struck with the thought: wow, the students look like teenagers! recently we were out, a group of us, and i was referring to a guy across the room, say around 25 or 26, and i actually found myself referring to him as "that kid over there!"
age just washes over you, doesn't it?
when does "middle age" officially begin?