Sobering Observations

[dean]

My pet theory on the passage of time is that the more new experiences you have, the slower time becomes.

The first eighteen or so years of your life, everything is new. When you're a kid, everything is something you've never experienced before. You show up to school, you make friends and lose friends with alarming regularity; for the first time love urges you to take its guidance. Maybe you have a job.

Think about how long it took you to get from thirteen to seventeen.

Eventually you get some sort of job or not, you find a way to eke out a living, and that's what you do. You meet someone to love, and now its no longer young love, but a family. It might change from time to time, but not by much, nothing new. And this is your goal.

If you're lucky, you get to take a vacation somewhere every once in a while. On that vacation, you are doing things you don't usually do. Two weeks stretch out, two weeks which would have flown by if you were at home. New experiences.

These days, I think the only passage of time I experience is the kids my friends have, I have none of my own. You know time has passed because the kid who you still think of as a baby is now entering middle school.

And now you're living life.

My work colleague has a similar theory, but it's more to do with just time in general: the older you get the shorter the years are as an overall average of your life.  When you're 16 you've had less time, so a year seems longer, when you're 60 a year is a smaller percentage of your overall 'life' and therefore seems to be quicker.

Can't say I argue with either theory, since it's August already and I still feel like it's May.

[Allhallowsday]

...What I find interested, not sobering, is that there is an entirely different kind of senior citizen coming in the next 10-20 years. I myself am 43, not too far behind you Burgo, and when I think of people in our general age range, I just don't see the typical senior citizen in the making. I wouldn't call it immaturity per se, but look at our interests compared to what the interests of our current seniors must have been at our age. I'm not really into comic books, but I am into bad movies and most my friends are younger than me. Odd, because when I was young I hung out with older people. It seems I've never really related to people my own age, but that's another matter. It's going to be a challenge for marketing people when people like us start entering retirement. That is, if retirement is even an option, and there's a sobering thought for you.

Well, at your advanced age you should be aware of the fact that "marketing people" don't give a rat's ass about the older people... won't they be in for a shock when the majority of people are seniors!!! 

[Jim H]

I think the veneration of them is too extreme at times, but hearing that a thousand WWII vets die a day is sobering...  I remember when the fiftieth anniversary of V-Day happened and the youngest vets were under 70.  It's a barometer of past time for me.

Also, working with people born in the 90s.  Bleh.

[Newt]

Also, working with people born in the 90s.  Bleh.

  Welcome to my world...

[Doggett]

Also, working with people born in the 90s.  Bleh.

  Welcome to my world...

It's horrible when you meet someone born in the 90's


 

Its like being slapped in the face with the age stick...

[HappyGilmore]

I think the veneration of them is too extreme at times, but hearing that a thousand WWII vets die a day is sobering...  I remember when the fiftieth anniversary of V-Day happened and the youngest vets were under 70.  It's a barometer of past time for me.

Also, working with people born in the 90s.  Bleh.

Ha.

I work in a place with a few kids who were born in the '90s, around '92/'93.  Mind you, I don't feel I'm old, as I was born in '84.  So, I'm not much older than them.  However, they referred to the Spice Girls as RETRO.

I remember being 13 when the Girls hit. 

These kids were reminiscing about "Classic" Nickelodeon, like "Early SpongeBob, Drake and Josh, and Kenan and Kel."  I looked at them and was just like, "First off, you were 3 when Kenan and Kel was on the air.  Secondly, early SpongeBob is NOT 'classic.'"  Classic Nick had You Can't Do That On Television and Clarissa Explains it All.