You know you are getting old when:

[Tiki Tom]

You know you are getting old when you read the headlines and think "glad I'm not young anymore!"

 

[Fading Fast]

You know you are getting old when you read the headlines and think "glad I'm not young anymore!"

I feel this way, way too often. We are on a not-good trajectory and I hope the good stuff can hold together for another few decades, but I doubt that will happen. But yes, it is odd to be happy you aren't younger.

 

[Trenchfriend]

You know, that you are 33, when you just now drove in the next bigger city and bought a contemporary viscofoam-topper for your new, but too hard Futon-matress.

I think, this will be a great investment from the next night on!

Unerotic German:

"M-A-T-R-A-T-Z-E-N-A-U-F-L-A-G-E"

 

[scottyrocks]

I feel this way, way too often. We are on a not-good trajectory and I hope the good stuff can hold together for another few decades, but I doubt that will happen. But yes, it is odd to be happy you aren't younger.

I don't think there is much odd about it at all. Most people I know don't want to go back, knowing what they know now.

 

[Fading Fast]

I don't think there is much odd about it at all. Most people I know don't want to go back, knowing what they know now.

I wonder if this is generational as "oh but to be young again" seemed to be a lament or theme I heard a lot growing up, but I don't hear it a lot now.

 

[ChrisB]

It would be great to have the body of a 20 year old and the mind of a 50 year old.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That wouldn't work, because the 50 year old mind couldn't remember what to do with the 20 year old body.

 

[scottyrocks]

That wouldn't work, because the 50 year old mind couldn't remember what to do with the 20 year old body.

haha, speak for yourself!

 

[Fading Fast]

That wouldn't work, because the 50 year old mind couldn't remember what to do with the 20 year old body.

Away from politics, I rarely disagree with you, but I don't really think that would be a problem. How much memory would I need to re-learn how to live without constant pains, kinks, etc., as well as, to no longer need eyeglasses. And heck, I'm pretty sure I'd still know what to do with everything that is factory fresh again.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I can't even remember being twenty all that well -- just disconnected images of riding a Greyhound bus with my feet stuck to the floor.

 

[Fading Fast]

At twenty, I graduated college and started working in a full time "real" job (had had plenty of get-by, pay-the-bill jobs, which are very real, but less career oriented) - felt like my life was just starting. My body worked, it just worked without thinking about it, and nothing hurt. Sure, I was worried about things - life is never easy - but for me, that was an age and time period when optimism and opportunity was high, responsibilities low and the knowledge of how brutal it all is hadn't fully hit yet.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I don't want to be 20 again, I'd just like to be able to make a few throws down to 2B without it feeling like an alligator is biting on my elbow.

 

[ChiTownScion]

In so many ways my life began at 20. Graduated from community college and was finally able to go off to university on my own terms. If I had been able to call the shots I would have liked to have been sent to a boarding school or even a military school when I was as young as eight. It was a less than ideal home life, and I always knew that I could do better fending for myself. Perhaps most kids believe that they possess more common sense than their parents, but I believed that mine was a truly objective assessment.

All that aside, those last two undergraduate years were among the happiest and most carefree of my life (Prior to retirement, of course.). Perhaps because I had to pay for it, I didn't take my studies for granted, or presume them as a matter of right. But when one's sole focus of responsibility is keeping up a GPA, life is still pretty simple and carefree no matter who is paying the bills. And not having to deal with the constant parental warfare was, well, blissful in its own sense.

 

[Fading Fast]

In so many ways my life began at 20. Graduated from community college and was finally able to go off to university on my own terms. If I had been able to call the shots I would have liked to have been sent to a boarding school or even a military school when I was as young as eight. It was a less than ideal home life, and I always knew that I could do better fending for myself. Perhaps most kids believe that they possess more common sense than their parents, but I believed that mine was a truly objective assessment.

All that aside, those last two undergraduate years were among the happiest and most carefree of my life (Prior to retirement, of course.). Perhaps because I had to pay for it, I didn't take my studies for granted, or presume them as a matter of right. But when one's sole focus of responsibility is keeping up a GPA, life is still pretty simple and carefree no matter who is paying the bills. And not having to deal with the constant parental warfare was, well, blissful in its own sense.

For different reasons in detail, I felt the same about life starting when I got out of my house and went to college - at seventeen. Like you, I paid my own freight, and (as I'm sure you did) worked a lot of hours during the school term (and more during breaks), but I felt free, on my own and excited about life for the first time just by being out of my house.

And like you, I took school very seriously, learned a lot and enjoyed it. Whereas, my education up until then had been adequate but not inspiring - you were put on a treadmill and you walked forward - college was an intellectually engaging and expanding experience that I am grateful for to this day. All the stress of my home life was lifted and I just had myself to care for - God, that was great.

At twenty, as noted above, I got my first real job and salary and, while low overall, it beat the heck out of the minimum or near-minimum wage jobs I had before and, without the added responsibility of school, work seemed easier. There is no money on earth that could get me to relive the first seventeen years of my life.

 

[Tiki Tom]

My teen years were fine. But being the son of not-very-wealthy immigrants, I was shown the door at 18. Four years in the army followed. Then, between the GI bill and a string of bottom of the barrel jobs, I somehow got myself a Bachelors degree and, eventually, a masters degree. In short, my 20s were about working full time and going to school almost full time. I invariably worked washing dishes or bussing tables or retail sales Thursdays through Sundays. You name the job, I probably did it at one time or another. Couldn’t get a date to save my life, but that one day changed when I suddenly got an entry level job with a bright outlook at a prestigious place of employment. I remember how surprised I was when I found out the job had health insurance AND a week of paid vacation per year! But by then I was thirty. I would not go back to my twenties for anything.

The above may also explain why, now, I am spoiling my two college-aged daughters ROTTEN. I sometimes say that, in my next life, I want to come back as MY kids.

 

[2jakes]

Some folks block things out. They are lucky.

I remember vividly things when I was twenty.
I remember where I was.
I remember what I was doing.
I remember the name of my staff sergeant.
I remember feeling like my life could over at any moment.
I remember those that never made it back.
I remember crying like a kid when I arrived back in the U.S.
I don’t talk about it much. No one asks or cares.

This is the most I have said on this forum.
I was bitter for a while, but I decided to change that.
The way I see it, having been there, everything else afterwards
is a piece of cake.

I tend to joke a lot...it’s a carry over from a time when I
either could sit down to cry & give up or laugh about it
and hope for the best that I might make it back in one piece.

I did!

 

[Fading Fast]

My teen years were fine. But being the son of not-very-wealthy immigrants, I was shown the door at 18. Four years in the army followed. Then, between the GI bill and a string of bottom of the barrel jobs, I somehow got myself a Bachelors degree and, eventually, a masters degree. In short, my 20s were about working full time and going to school almost full time. I invariably worked washing dishes or bussing tables or retail sales Thursdays through Sundays. You name the job, I probably did it at one time or another. Couldn’t get a date to save my life, but that one day changed when I suddenly got an entry level job with a bright outlook at a prestigious place of employment. I remember how surprised I was when I found out the job had health insurance AND a week of paid vacation per year! But by then I was thirty. I would not go back to my twenties for anything.

The above may also explain why, now, I am spoiling my two college-aged daughters ROTTEN. I sometimes say that, in my next life, I want to come back as MY kids.

A very good friend of mine had a somewhat similar experience, not shown the door at all, but had to start supporting his widowed mom in his late teens, worked a bunch of jobs, got through college eventually, etc. He absolutely spoils his daughters (not in the traditional way the term is used - they are very nice, polite, hard working, young women) as he wanted them to have fun at college and not worry about money or working.

Our two jokes are that we both want to come back in our next life as his kids and that we both want to have an account at the Bank of Bill (his name) as his daughters bank there - you never have to make a deposit, the bank pays all your bills and always covers your checks and if you run short of funds, the bank always gives you more. He's (obviously) done very well for himself and it makes him incredibly happy to do this for his kids.

 

[2jakes]

You know you are getting old if you remember before daytime TV soaps
there was...

 

[belfastboy]

That wouldn't work, because the 50 year old mind couldn't remember what to do with the 20 year old body.

I am not so sure about that.....kind a like ridin' a bike I think.

 

[belfastboy]

A very good friend of mine had a somewhat similar experience, not shown the door at all, but had to start supporting his widowed mom in his late teens, worked a bunch of jobs, got through college eventually, etc. He absolutely spoils his daughters (not in the traditional way the term is used - they are very nice, polite, hard working, young women) as he wanted them to have fun at college and not worry about money or working.

Our two jokes are that we both want to come back in our next life as his kids and that we both want to have an account at the Bank of Bill (his name) as his daughters bank there - you never have to make a deposit, the bank pays all your bills and always covers your checks and if you run short of funds, the bank always gives you more. He's (obviously) done very well for himself and it makes him incredibly happy to do this for his kids.

The other side of that coin; in his indulgence to make himself feel good he is depriving his daughters of the experience (and character building) of doing it themselves.