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The Significance of Age

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13:35 / 25.03.03

Today is my birthday and I am now TWENTY FIVE. It seems a significant age.

13:54 / 25.03.03

Well, happy birthday. Why do you think twenty-five is significant, then?

13:57 / 25.03.03

quarter century.

big jobs.

i am 22, and feel it like a chronic hypochondriac feels the flu.

Whisky Priestess

14:18 / 25.03.03

Quarter-life crisis coming up. I had the same feeling when I turned 25 - not helped by having no proper job or relationship or home at the time.

You are no longer in the "youth" 18-24 demographic

But thank your lucky stars you're still in your mid-20s (24,25,26) - I turn 27 in a few weeks and enter my late twenties (27 28 29), which as we all know is the beginning of the end of everything. I figure it's time to start lying about my age, so I'm going to fuck with people's heads and tell everyone it's my 30th.

14:29 / 25.03.03

You can still count yourself young if teenagers on the tube/bus/wherever lower their voices in front of you because it means they think you might be interested in what they are saying, and are therefore still considered young. It's when they don't care if you can hear (and quite possibly don't even know you're there) that you can be sure you're past it...

14:50 / 25.03.03

WP:
"I turn 27 in a few weeks and enter my late twenties (27 28 29), which as we all know is the beginning of the end of everything."

Surely it ends much earlier than that these days, given that it starts so bloody soon? In *my* day it didn't start till 16 or 17, so you could reasonably expect it not to end till 30 or so. Now, though, it starts at f***ing 6, so to be fair on everyone you should be all side-partings and tweeds by 20. People of my son's generation will be expecting to retire by the time they're 16. Bloody kids. Go on, get to bed!

15:04 / 25.03.03

I have a side parting. I also like to wear cordroys.

15:07 / 25.03.03

Happy Birthday I am twenty five.

25 used to seem soooo old. When you're little and can't wait to grow up and do things like watch 18 films, eat sweets all day and go to bed when you want. It used to seem like the age when everything would be sorted. You'd have a house, a car, be in a meaningful relationship, and have a really good job.

Oh dear. Nevermind.

On a slight tangent - I used to get the hump seeing young adults (mid 20s) especially couples when I was on school trips as they could do what they wanted and didn't have to walk in file to the eating area with the teachers saying "come on you" etc. They could smoke and lark about and stuff. I'm sad to say, I'm reminded of this everytime I see a bunch of school kids at a school-trip-like location (last time was at the zoo) and can't help but think - ha ha.

Little things please little minds eh?

pointless and uncalled for

15:13 / 25.03.03

I'm 27, how the hell do you manage to make me feel so old?

15:15 / 25.03.03

Why is it that you feel so old, Potus?

The Natural Way

15:18 / 25.03.03

Happy bday, I am 25! A special day with cake and special friends.

C'mon Barbelith, where's the love? It's his birthday! He's 25!

pointless and uncalled for

15:23 / 25.03.03

Because everyone on this thread is a mealy-mouthed whippersnapper with no respect for their elders and betters gangdammit.

Whisky Priestess

15:51 / 25.03.03

I forgot to say Happy Birthday, IA25, but now I've said it and I mean it. Go out and do everything that's only legal over 18, except maybe get an HGV licence or become an MP.

15:55 / 25.03.03

Thank you all. I am really enjoying my birthday.

16:35 / 25.03.03

Yeah, happy b'day, twenty five.

I'm twenty two, twenty three in August and I feel fucking ancient. It is not helped by the fact that today I got a collection slip for my prescription with "Mrs *********" written on it (I'm most assuredly a Ms). Fucking married off by the pharmacy checkout girl. But once I was mistaken for a 16 year old and a thirty year old in the same week. That was weird.

16:50 / 25.03.03

Your car insurance rates go down when yr 25. (She said hopefully.) Mental note to self: must buy a car within the year. (I just turned 24.)

I watched the movie Singles recently, which I hadn't seen in *years*. I was horrified to learn that I was as old as Bridget Fonda's character. When I first saw that movie, she seemed so old. Not like washed-up old, but, just, a grown-up. I do not feel grown up now.

I think a good discussion would be: just what is this "it" Saveloy speaks of?

18:37 / 25.03.03

A friend informed me that I would be 25 in a few months and it scared the hell out of me. But I'm nowhere near the life of those wankers in 'Singles', who still seem like they're 34 to me. So it's okay.

Happy Birthday 25!

19:04 / 25.03.03

I am 16.
Yes, Im at the most annoying age possible.

I cant get arrested for all the illegal things i want to do.
Im not yet old enough to do most of the legal things i want to do.
The things i can now legally do, besides getting married, i was doing long before i was 16.

My sister is 26, and i think of her as quite old. Married, 2 kids, good job, nice house.
However my brother is 32 and i think of him as quite young. Single, fast car, rents a wee flat, no kids.
So i know its a cliche, but its probably how young you feel. Hope you feel young, especially as i'll be as old as u in 9 years. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Tryphena Absent

20:39 / 25.03.03

Happy Birthday!

Olulabelle, I must be way past it at the old old age of 21. Two teenagers on a train in Brighton actually raised their voices so that I'd hear their whole conversation (and it was very boring).

20:47 / 25.03.03

Anna, hmmm. Finding it very boring is possibly a sign of being past it, regardless of teenage volume ;-)

Tryphena Absent

20:53 / 25.03.03

Well they were talking about a dance recital and a friend's relationship troubles... hmm, I remember that from the weekend before last. Worrying since it was hardly the most thrilling conversation and particularly when you don't know anyone involved. Perhaps if they'd let out some juicy details about their own lives I might have listened closely!

12:46 / 13.07.03

Btw - maturity *is* something to be proud of, I expect. And I'm not calling anyone else old. Or anything like that. I'm just dealing really badly with the fact that I'm a real proper adult now. Yes. Basically.

14:38 / 13.07.03

advancing age would be something to be proud of if we were all going to live forever ... but we're not, we're just going to bloody well decay

Speak for yourself, youngster! (And when you do you'll have to speak up and right into my ear trumpet) I am exactly twice your age and have never been happier. Can't deny that I am not the little fag shaggamuffin I was at 23 anymore but the regular injections of monkey glands do wonders. Plus, I don't really give shit any more and that's a mercy.

Me at 23? Just finished University and freaking out at the prospect of getting a real job. Just coming out of my first long term relationship and extremely messed up in the handsome-young-head department. Just buying my first (bleak, Dickensian, bare boards and sleeping on the floor) flat and couldn't afford dog food let alone beer. But there was so much fun in store for me! Wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about what lay ahead. There was no point and it was a waste of energy that should have been spent doing 23 year old things - bad, bad things...

Relax and enjoy, Cholister Minor. You've got years of pleasure ahead and you'll still never catch up with me. And I'm not dead yet. Quite astonished by that fact. Didn't even meet the love of my life till I was 38.

Old Mother Xoc gazes into hir crystal ball and sees Dame Cholister, the legendary Queen of Slash and London's première domme, e-mailing the Queen of Sweden to politely decline the Nobel Prize for 2053 because she's off to Torture Garden that night with twelve assorted young slaves of all four sexes.

14:50 / 13.07.03

Aww, Xoc. *grins*

Thank you, you know. Really, really.

*

15:44 / 13.07.03

Chol, twenty-three is going to be your best year yet. I know. I did a reading for you.

You will have an unexplained synchronic event regarding the number twenty three every day, even if you do not realize it.

The Goddess Eris will take a special interest in you and your loved ones, and your mental health, and theirs.

She may even manifest into your life physically, and proceed to wreak her special brand of joy that way.

Your creativity will be at its most chaotic.

You will receive job offers disguised as tax forms from the Illuminati.

You will also receive death threats disguised as bar flyers from the Illuminati posing as the Discordian Society.

Do not be alarmed. It is a sign of the vast, international, cosmic conspiracy---

---to make your life as interesting as possible.

And I'm not saying this just because I happen to be twenty-three myself just now. Nooo indeed.

15:48 / 13.07.03

Well, I'll be 30 this yr. It is scary, no getting away from the fact of the decaying business. However, I am not scared of death, 'cos I don't understand how anyone whose been as physically ill as I have in my life could be; like, duh, death's where the pain stops, how can that be bad or scary? I suspect anyone who hasn't had major surgery before quitting their teens will know what I'm talking about, but when one brushes up against serious illness and mortality that young, you don't half get chilled about croaking. It really can be one's only hope of release, a precious, beautiful thing. Like Foucault, I've always sort of felt that it'd be possible to hit, say, 60, decide enough's enough and enjoy a dignified and possibly even fun death. (Think Tim Leary, whose last words I believe were, "Sure, why not?" when offered more charlie. Or K, can't recall.)

On the major plus side, I am muchly in agreement with Xoc. Lots of studies find that, contray to popular opinion, one's 20's are not the best days of one's life; for many they're can be misma of worry about the future. Mine certainly were, well, quite agonising at times to be honest, which isn't to say the next ten years 'll be bliss but, well, a tiny lil' bit of experience does go a long way in a sort of 'making life generally easier' sort of way. I'm sure no one will ever be totally sorted, but I think I'm moving in the right direction, which is something. Well I think that on good days, anyway.

And yeah, happy birthdaze, yawl!

15:58 / 13.07.03

the fucking Harry Potter slash keeps reminding me that as a teenager I was incredibly isolated and friendless and never really got the chance to chill the fuck out and *be* a proper teenager...and that there's no fixing that, because I'm bloody ancient now, and it's far, far too late.

Pish, Cholister, and tush. I did my teen years throughout my early-mid twenties; it's not only acceptable these days, it's expected. And none of the HP kids ever had the chance to chill the fuck out and be a proper teenager, either: I find the slash really helpful in terms of feeding my Inner Harry his belated youth. But then I have no shame and take my Inner Harry out dancing on a regular basis,* which just makes me feel utterly exalted and joyous that I can be a teen now I am old, independent and rich enough to do it properly.

I am having a weird relationship with age at the moment, due to having a way older girlfriend,** which makes me feel simultaneously like a total whippersnapper and v old (like, when my friends moan about turning 30 ['I'm so oooold!'] I just get confused ['but 30 is still a whippersnapper!']). I really like the non-anchoredness of it, though: I was always shit at being the age I was supposed to be. I think of it as like being non-securely gendered, actually: it's very liberating, being non-securely-aged.

*I take my Inner Snape out dancing too, but he doesn't enjoy it as much.

**older than you, Xoc, you whippersnapper. And old enough that I have to say: Bill - sixty?! Eep! Life has barely begun at sixty!

16:23 / 13.07.03

I'm certainly at a precarious stage in life. I'm 20, and have just graduated from University (as the current ficsuit suggests). In September I will be 21. Big turning points. Currently looking around for jobs, work experience, that kind of thing. Finally feeling truly adult, though; the growing up happened in the past six months, and I'm glad it did. There you go. Significant to me, if nothing else.

16:58 / 13.07.03

Ye gods. Self-pity is so unappealing. I'd delete it, but it's not like it ruins my image, or anything. Sigh.

17:27 / 13.07.03

"They all want you when your seventeen, when your twenty one your no fun" Ladytron.

Well I'm twenty but its still apt, I suppose. I feel that I should be just discovering psychedellics now. Well the things I did in my teenage years have left me terribly insecure or it could be a return to form after years of mindless hopped up oblivion...ich.
But I feel I really need to get started (on life) being twenty. Perhaps a modular night course is in order.
I like Cholister am living with my parents once again ...ich... I find myself becoming very teenagery listening to heavy metal and will have to start out on my own again... once again ich.... both choices are equally unattractive.

Tryphena Absent

17:57 / 13.07.03

I'm 21 and it's totally insignificant. At the moment I'm doing the usual things that people my age are meant to do but that doesn't really figure. So I've finished university, tomorrow I'm graduating, soon I'll be starting a new job. I could easily be 19 or 25 and be in the exact same position.

I live with my parents and I don't mind. They're okay, my mother moans about psychoanalysis and my dad enthuses about bad sci-fi shows and japanese kitsch. I like talking to them, a large proportion of the world is quite stupid when compared to my parents and politically they're so sorted out it's disgusting. If anything this is where my age is significant because there's just no shame in living with your family at the age of 21.

18:10 / 13.07.03

Chol - it sounds like you had a pretty rotten adolescence. This is bad luck but need not determine what the rest of your life will be like. I'd say, what with getting to know yourself better and starting a new course in the autumn (where you are more likely to meet congenial people than you were as an undergrad, I'd say), that things are very likely to improve. I know that I, for one, am much happier now than I was as a teenager, and have absolutely no desire to be a teenager again. No thanks. I am looking forward to decaying disgracefully - the older you get, the better you know how to be yourself, I reckon. Even if that involves surprising yourself (see next para).

As for sticky fumblings with friends - in my opinion you have plenty of time for that! Why, I once had sticky fumblings with a complete stranger on the plinth of one of the Trafalgar Square lions, and if I managed to do that I don't see why you can't do sticky fumblage with friends...

18:53 / 13.07.03

Oh cool! The age thing! I'm 18. I'm living three months of structureless, meaningless, oppulant dirging before I move away, assuming I don't get myself kneecapped or shot for going to Northern Ireland and imparting some constructive criticism on the Orangemen's asses.

Yeh, I freaked out in the supermarket today with my girlfriend when the sudden realisaiton came that I'd actually have to do that, in real life, for something other then crisps and ice cream.

I don't know if my age is important, but probablly my lack of experience is. I'll probablly learn to shut up a bit more, and I mgiht run out of stereotypes to hit when I amass a wider sample of people I know. I guess it is important in a drinking way, though. So yes, the over-18 thing I important, but the under-19 possibly less so.

09:06 / 14.07.03

I just realised I'm 24 I thought I was 23 how fucking mental is that? So that means I'll be 25 next year, imagine that.

09:53 / 14.07.03

Thinking that soon-ish I won't be allowed to have a young persons railcard. That is weird. Weird and inconvenient.

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