We all have moments when we realize that we aren’t spring chickens anymore. Although some of these experiences will be unique to the individual, the things listed here are almost universal, and will undoubtedly catch up to you in time.
1. Teenage slang.
In your day-to-day meanderings, you’ll hear terms like “rizz”, “lewks”, and “yeet”, and wonder if the people afflicted by these things are in need of antibiotics. You don’t understand half of what the young people around you are saying, and any attempt to echo their colloquialisms will result in them being utterly disgusted with you.
Naturally, modern slang terms aren’t half as good as the ones you used when you were younger. After all, those made sense—these are just strange clicks and buzzes that confuse and unnerve you.
2. Realizing that your favorite songs are now on the “oldies” station.
There’s nothing like turning on your car radio and discovering that one of your favorite songs is playing. Naturally, you turn up the volume and sing along at the top of your lungs, feeling like you’re on top of the world, in the best mood you’ve been in all month.
Then the DJ comes on and you realize that you’ve tuned in to the geriatric channel. The tunes that fuel your soul are now interspersed with botox or denture adverts and reminders to book a prostate exam.
3. Feeling like doctors and other professionals you work with look like kids.
Your GP refers you to a specialist for A Something, and when you get there, a chipper teenager in a white coat skips into the exam room and announces that they’re the doctor who’s going to be in charge of keeping you alive.
Then you discover that your new manager at work is younger than your kids. They inform everyone that the office is switching to Blammo messaging and Zilk software because they’re more compatible with Yarflax, and you need to go lie down for a minute.
4. Forgetting why you walked into the room you just entered.
You’re on a mission, you walk into a room to get the thing you need to get that important mission done… and you blank on what it was as soon as you get there. The awareness of what you needed is so far gone, it may never have existed at all.
Sometimes, you’ll go back to what you were doing and the memory of what you needed will be jogged, but then something else will distract you, and whoops—it’s gone again. Expect to repeat this process several times.
5. Being berated by your kids for wearing cool, “retro” styles when you’re just wearing clothes you bought 30 years ago.
Your children give you dirty looks for wearing a Nirvana T-shirt like you’re still young and cool, when in reality, you bought that thing at a concert in 1993. It’s falling apart and you just wear it when you clean the house, unaware that you were offending youthful fashion sensibilities.
Suddenly, you realize that styles you once wore are back in fashion, just like how you wore 70s flare bell bottoms when you were in high school. You’re unintentionally fashionable again, and your offspring are horrified.
6. Having a favorite cup or utensil and having your day ruined when you can’t use it.
You don’t just want a cup of coffee: it needs to be in your favorite cup, or it won’t taste the same. Similarly, if you have to eat a meal with a fork or spoon other than the one you like best, the entire meal will be ruined.
If these items go missing, you’ll tear your home apart looking for them and heaven help anyone else who might have used them. You might even carry them with you to ensure that they’re always within your reach, and no one else’s.
7. Getting really excited about a new frying pan or steam vacuum cleaner.
Whereas your younger self would have been delighted to receive a great new album, clothing item, or game, you’re now effervescent with delight when you unwrap nonstick cookware or nourishing moisturizer that some thoughtful being gave you as a holiday gift.
Additionally, you find yourself doing more “rocking out” when you’re cleaning the house than you do at any concerts or parties. Instead of head banging to that amazing Iron Maiden song you love, you’re steam-cleaning the linoleum floor to it with great enthusiasm.
8. Being called “sir” or “ma’am” by people who don’t look much younger than you feel.
If and when you brave the shopping mall to go get some new clothes, you’re astonished by how hideously expensive the clothes are now. Furthermore, any time you examine an item you might like to wear, you’re addressed as “sir” or “ma’am” by a salestoddler and asked if you need help. Or a defibrillator.
Similarly, you might still feel that you’re in great physical condition, but younger people on public transit offer you their seats in case you crumble to dust by standing up for too long.
9. Having younger people ask you if TVs and phones existed when you were a kid.
Then you get to describe to them how there were only a few channels available, and if you were visiting your grandmother at the time, you had to walk over to the television set and turn the dial to your preferred channel.
As for phones, there were only landlines with long cords that could strangle you if you got wrapped up in them. When you wanted to talk to your friends, you had to call them and speak to their parents for a few minutes first. It was diabolical.
10. Everything is too loud.
You don’t understand when and why they increased the volume everywhere you go. Concerts are now 2000% louder than they were when you were in your twenties, and you now have to wear earplugs or sound-dampening headphones at the movies so you don’t end up with tinnitus for a week.
The same goes for sounds at home: the roar of the fridge is enough to make you want to pitch it out the door sometimes, and your dogs’ toenails clack on the floor like demonic castanets.
11. Having a favorite grocery store.
When you go grocery shopping, you have a favorite store that you like to go to because it always has that thing you like in stock, but you’ll grudgingly go to the other one as well because that other thing you like is cheaper there.
That said, you’ll happily pay a bit extra at the “good” store because the music they play is better, and you have a coupon for 2-for-1 digestive biscuits that you’re keen on using before it expires.
12. Struggling to do things that were effortless to you when you were younger
The hill you ran up as a child now makes you clutch your chest and wheeze when you’re a quarter of the way up. You’d love to eat popcorn at the movies but you know it’ll trigger your dyspepsia, and if you drop a piece, you’ll make ridiculous “old people” noises when attempting to pick it back up. (Third time’s a charm!)
Similarly, while you could once drop and doze soundly on the living room floor, now you need a blackout mask and white noise machine to sleep.
