Happy Birthday to Me

I am 57 years old today! Yippee. I've been practicing saying "57" recently so it wouldn't be so much of a shock when the day came. It doesn't actually seem so bad. You know, now that 50 is the new 40 and all that hoopla. I keep reading about how we 'boomers' refuse to be old, so hey, I'll join that movement. For all the good it will do me. (Hint people: WE ALL GET OLD.)

Fortunately aging is a fairly gradual thing. Assuming we actually look at ourselves in the mirror every day, it should not come as a shock that things are changing in that reflection. (It is odd though how once in awhile a specific wrinkle can actually dig in overnight, like one of those flowers that suddenly blooms in one day.) But the physical changes are only part of the story. Like someone who eventually loses ALL their hair, I have finally lost ALL my hip-ness. I have lost ALL vestiges of my knowledge of current pop culture, technology trends, and cool jargon. Ya see, there's an example right there. Hardly anyone under 40 says "cool". Or "jargon" for that matter. The word "cool" has been replaced with any number of other adjectives. The last one I am aware of is "sweet". But since I am at least ten years behind in modern youth-speak, "sweet" is probably out the door by now.
I think the word "hip" is gone too. I followed that word just long enough to be able to use it in a sentence like "Yeah, I'm hip to that." Then I think it changed to "I'm so down with that." It took me awhile to realize that 'down' was not a bad thing. Like Alice's Wonderland, a lot of stuff is upside down. For example, "Phat" is good. And that's right about where I left off.

I remember lots of fun ways to say things when I was young. "Hang a Louie" meant 'turn left' and "bang a Ralph" meant 'turn right.' Of course Louie also meant lunger and that's about as far as I want to go with that train of thought. Ralph also took on other meanings, including 'barf'. Then it became 'spew', 'spew chunks' and 'hurl'. There are probably new ones now. Ah, there can never be enough words for puking.

But besides all that, I have peacefully accepted that I will nevermore keep up with popular technology. I'm cool with computers. (Did you notice how I slipped in "cool"? Sometimes I can't help myself.) But cell phones, iPods, Blackberries, Bluetooth? Uh uh. Yes, I am able to make a phone call with my cell phone and recently learned how to add contacts in it. But this obsession with texting is so beyond me. I do not know how to text. (And when did the word 'text' become a verb anyway? It even has tenses, as in "Jason just texted me. " That just sounds so wrong.) I received a text message just once and I had no idea what was going on. My cell phone made a noise I had never heard before and I thought it was the alert for low battery. I picked it up and discovered I had a text message. What do I do now? I finally figured out how to retrieve the message and felt as if I had arrived in the 21st century. Until I realized I had no idea how to text back to the friend who sent the message. So I just called him and told him never to do that again.

It bugs me that youngsters (how do you like that one?) are continually staring at their cell phones and punching in messages that as far as I can tell amount to "what are you doin?" "Nothing." What a wasted use of God's great idea of the opposable thumb. But I've decided that it serves no purpose to get aggravated. This is just how it is. If I had kids of my own I would teach them simple manners about using their phones at the dinner table, just like our parents had rules about reading a comic book at the dinner table. Same code of courtesy, just different media. However, I understand that generally speaking, things are the way they are, kids have new ways to confound their elders, and although I don't like tattoos, body piercings, or texting, it's here and that's it and that's that. Done deal. Get over it.

So Happy Birthday to me. I am perfectly content to be 57, text-challenged and woefully un-hip.
Yo Dawg, I am so down with that.