DISCLAIMER: I have strong opinions. And they are probably WRONG opinions, in many cases. I don’t claim to be one hundred percent right in my views, and under review, I, sometimes, change my mind. This does NOT mean I want you screaming at me to change my mind, as the stubborn rule will ensue, and then you’ve locked me into hating your point of view. It’s bad enough that I hate you to begin with… do you really want me hating your beliefs, too? I’m not asking you to agree with me. As I said before… fuck your shoes. You walked in here.
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I am old.
I am not “getting” old. I am not trying to “stretch my youth” anymore. I’m just old. I’m lumpy. I’m realizing I’m slowly becoming “not cool” to kids anymore. I might as well be a dad.
I’ve come to learn this because I live outside of the glowing centerpiece of media popularity. Some styles last forever. And the ones that don’t suddenly show up on the classic rock station, like Green Day.
My clothing style, no matter how hard I try, just looks funny when the wearer has a receding hairline, grey in his beard and hair, and listens to late nineties pop punk. The only problem I have with getting old is that I grew up in a generation that never grew up. Even the kids nowadays have managed to jump my gap and are more mature in their decisions, while my generation is floating around on crummy jobs, addiction to video games, and tastes in music that never matured into another but snobbery.
I guess this could attach itself to any generation, and maybe I’m noticing it more in my own, because I am a part of it… but I’m starting to understand when my dad said that I looked like an idiot with the baggy pants… because now that I see these emo kids and their odd hairstyles and guys wearing girls’ jeans, I start to say to myself “That kid looks like an idiot.”
I used to think that kids thought I was cool when I worked in the video game store back in the day. And maybe for a small spot in their lives, I WAS cool. Maybe the smaller ones were like “I want to work at a game store!” I know when I was a kid, I was jealous, because they were around everything I wanted… but they looked bored.
But now that I look at myself four years ago, I realize that a 26 year old KID worked there. And now I’m a 30 year old MAN. I’m hearing my favorite songs only during the “best of the 90’s!” And my favorite bands are showing up on the easy listening stations. Why is “Lightning Crashes” by Live on 106.7 and why does my dad like it!?
Coldplay was on the Christian radio station a few months back.
I think that was what started it all. “Viva La Vida” popped on, and I listened to it, and then Johnny Stone’s voice suddenly came on… “Looking Up to Number One.” And there it was, Star 99.1’s Christian message, coming through a secular song that was just there because it was inspirational somehow…
Or maybe because it mentioned St. Peter.
In any case, I never changed the station after that, and I walked out to the yard and waved my cane at the kids playing in the street and yelled something about “You’ll get hit by a car!”
It was all a daydream, as I’m not 80 years old. And I don’t live in a house with a picket fence and a yard. But damn I feel old.
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