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The Significance of Age

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09:56 / 14.07.03

Oh, yeah, losing your young person's railcard is totally the new coming-of-age in the UK. (I can still get one, despite being nearly 28, because I'm in full-time education for another year or so, but I'm dreading the grown-up feeling I'll get when I have to start paying full fare. Not to mention the penury.)

10:07 / 14.07.03

I am 21, it means nothing, but I feel terrible that so far I haven't managed to do anything with my life worth talking about.

I am seriously thinking of becoming a mercenary in Cambodia, or Norway.

10:08 / 14.07.03

Christ, I'm ten years older than Cholister. I suddenly feel absolutely decrepit.

10:17 / 14.07.03

I'm ten years older than *everyone*. Including you, young Sax-the-dad.

I suppose the thought of getting nearer 40 is pretty freaky but otherwise my mid-30s are doing just fine, thanks. Other than the lack of a young person's railcard, of course. How soon can I get an OAP one?

10:22 / 14.07.03

Considering that you, me and everyone else will be working until we're 80 at the very least, not for a while yet.

I'll book you a room in the Twilight Pastures Retirement Home for Cranky Old Journalists Who Have Developed A Bitter Outlook On Life As What They Have Had To Work For All Of It And Are Now Skint.

It's very nice!

11:05 / 14.07.03

I'm now 31 and developing grey temples ala Reed Richards.

I've also just acquired yet another scar to add to my collection. This one is about 5 inches long, vertically covering my tailbone. I'm not too worried about this as one more scar will not scare anyone who hasn't already been scared by the other scars. Ha. Try saying that quickly 5 times over.

However, I think the general anasthetic has had a depressant effect on me, and I've been wallowing in remorse at how my 5 year long relationship went arse over tit last year. I feel like I failed somehow (totally taking responsibility for everything as usual) and can't imagine trying again ever.

Then main reason I posted though was Xoc. I found your post very cheering - especially the bit about meeting the love of your life at age 38.

A friend committed suicide 2 weeks ago and I went to the funeral last Friday. Same age as me - 31. This, aside from every other emotion I've felt in response, has also made me evaluate my own life. I can say that at 31 I'm not in that absolutely despairing place anyhow. Pretty far removed actually.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:21 / 14.07.03

I'm two months away from my 27th birthday which I'm not that fussed about, though I expect that when I hit 30 I might start to get a little worried. I found the most difficult period in my life so far was probably about 21 to 24, my last year at uni through to tne end of my first job which I disliked immensely. I felt like I didn't emotionally hit puberty until I left home for university, and this went on certainly until I left that first job. Plus, I was working at a secondary school, which was probably not a great place to be when confused about my maturity and whatnot. Getting away from that environment into a situation where I'm working with people my age or older does feel better for me.

11:24 / 14.07.03

I'm 26, married and mortgaged, which makes me feel very old!

My age is significant because I am now the age my mother was when she had me and so have realised that being a grown up isn't as empowering as you expect it to be.

Rather freakily my hubby is currently the same age his mum was when she had him! Hope this doesn't mean we have to start producing grandchildren!

11:35 / 14.07.03

I just turned 22 and now I'm having to move back in with my parents, which is horribly depressing as it seems like such a backwards step. plus I'm moving away from Glasgow (big city, lots to do and lots of people and clubs and general goodness) back to St. Albans, a town that must be among the dullest suburban places in the world. However I still feel horribly immature, and not grown up at all, and will probably still be like that forever.

11:37 / 14.07.03

I also only met the love of my life in my 30s - I fully believe that people should not be allowed to enter into a serious relationship until they're out of their 20s. That should be The Law.

11:45 / 14.07.03

I fully believe that people should not be allowed to enter into a serious relationship until they're out of their 20s

I've been with my husband for 9 years (only married for one though!) so I was stupidly young when we got together. He's 9 years older than me though so I guess it kinda balances out.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:14 / 14.07.03

When I turned 25, I made much of the fact that that meant that, given usual male life expectancy, I was one-third dead.

I'm now more than that. Make of it what you will.

12:26 / 14.07.03

Depends on how you look at it. Why not say Oh dear God, those 25 years were absolute purgatory, and it looks like I'll have to suffer that punishment twice over before I earn my rest.

See? Things are looking better already.

12:31 / 14.07.03

And how do you know 25 is one-third dead? It could be 25/26ths dead. Watch out for buses when you cross the street.

Whisky Priestess

13:43 / 14.07.03

SAx: "I fully believe that people should not be allowed to enter into a serious relationship until they're out of their 20s"

Oh, pish and tush, Mr. Curmudgeon. I think it entirely depends on whom you meet and when. I've got friends who met the love of their life when they were 22 (and now at 26 are married and happy thanks very much). What were they supposed to do under the Sax code - hold hands for 8 years?

On the other hand I do agree that sticking with one person from age 18-25 or whatever can be rather stunting, esp after you break up and you realise that those were the years in which you were meant to be slutting around with everyone you could lay your hands on.

Not that I had that problem, but some mates certainly have, and felt as though they had wasted their window of sexual irresponsibility.

14:10 / 14.07.03

Not entirely serious there, Whisk. During my 20s I thought I'd met the love of my life and was then mighty relieved when I realised I hadn't a couple of years later.

14:11 / 14.07.03

And it's never too late to have a window of sexual irresponsibility!

14:23 / 14.07.03

I feel reeeeeally fuckin' old today (still only 28, same as yesterday, felt young yesterday) but it's probably just because I'm at work and it's Monday.
I miss my 18-25 period of sluttish irresponsibility, it's just not the same later in life. *sigh*

17:14 / 14.07.03

It seems so odd to hear that people feel old in their twenties. Are you all expecting to die young? Or just to have to somehow endure 50-60 years of sheer decrepitude?

I figure I can make it to 80 or 85, with luck and little caution, so I don't expect to consider myself old till 70 or so. Even 10 years is too long to be old, if by old you mean something bad.

*

18:29 / 14.07.03

I feel older these days, but that's because some of my friends are doing the grown-up things I swore I'd never do-- getting married, getting "careers" etc. That and I'm noticing some things, like not having as much energy as I used to, and judging by my cousins I only have a year or so to enchant myself taller before I'm pretty sure those epiphyseal plates close for good. That makes me sad.

I also live in florida-- in fact in sarasota, florida-- so am surrounded by undead zombie horrors. I fear it might be contagious, which is another reason I want so badly to get out of here.

18:54 / 14.07.03

I'll tell you how old I am. The title of this thread makes me think it should be a Yes album track.

21:00 / 14.07.03

I am 37. 4 years older than Christ when he died, and there's still very little chance that they'll decide to consider the year of my birth year "0" and start all over again.... What would I need to do for people to decide that the world changed so much when I was born that we need to start counting backwards and forwards from that date?

21:15 / 14.07.03

A nice pair of sandals and some local fisherman to stalk you, alas. I'd quite like to have been born in the year 9 B.a.

01:50 / 15.07.03

I own a pair of Birkenstocks, but live no where near a significant body of fishable waters . . . And, my dog chewed on my Birks so they are not as nice as the once were. And I think I might have been able to make at least a convenience case for wholesale renumbering before the whole Y2K thing blew over. But now . . . alas and alackaday (to take my own name in vain).

02:24 / 15.07.03

I rather like the phrase "pish and tosh" or whatever it was...

I turn 45 in something less than two months, and I'm looking forward to it, for some perverse reason. Probably because it's another "milestone" number where I can thumb my nose at convention - I'm single & relatively unencumbered, have a city full of interesting people to be sexually adventurous with.

No picket fence for me, nosiree!!

05:38 / 15.07.03

Turned 29 last month. Significant? sort of. A lot has changed in my life in the last year, even more in the last 6 months. I've made some new friends and let go of some old ones. I gave up smoking (of the green variety) this year as well after a 10 year love affair. Its the last year I pretend I'm still a kid...

07:44 / 15.07.03

Oh bollocks! Stop fretting and grow old disgracefully!

The vast majority of us will never fit comfortably into "mainstream" society, so stop worrying about it and get on with it! I'm 32 and very slowly but surely getting my shit together, well enough to know that if you aren't going to buy into society's notions of relationship and self and maturity and the need to slave for the man, then you don't actually have to follow any of the rules at all.

I find this quite liberating, so there's no need to worry about growing up, just take on the self responsibility and start scaring the nuclear families!

15:33 / 15.07.03

This thread was the product of idle whimsy. It even started with a lie: it wasn't my birthday and I'm not twenty-five. I'm twenty-seven... and three quarters

21:20 / 15.07.03

I work on the principle of 10 year chunks

5-15 = child
15-25 = young adult
25-35 = adult
35-45 = mature adult
45-55 = "NO I'm still not old yet!!!!"
55-65 = old
65-75 = elderly
75+ borrowed time so call it what you damn well feel like!

which means at 34 I am not old! Honest!!

'specially as I keep getting told I only look 29

22:02 / 15.07.03

a rant from last year. This year, on august 23, 2003, i will turn 23. i don't think i need to explain why that's significant.

---

I turn 22 on Friday. Normally, this is a fairly unimportant birthday, in the shadow of a Big One for most Americans (which also winds up feeling meaningless once it passes). However, it is the very unimportance of 22 that started an odd train of thought in me many years ago, and why it's already feeling a little odd.

When I was twelve or so, I started playing RPGs. I had to pick personalities for my characters, lives far bigger than my own, as the average life of a precocious twelve-year-old in most games is a rather silly thing, and not what I wanted. I had to figure out my assumptions for the future and project. Looking at my family and societal differences at certain ages, I made my first characters 22.

At 22, I thought, the government had already decided you were old enough to be in a war, to vote, to drink, yet there was nothing inherently special about the number (unlike 18, or 21). At 22, the standard four-year college student has just finished and is starting on their way to what they think they want to do for the rest of their life. I assumed they were old enough to have half a clue, yet not too mature for Adventures. I assumed that, by this time, I would have such direction, such drive, along with a wildness, a craving for Adventure, and the means to satisfy it. I could go gallivanting across the land, by then, could be out of my parents' house, having a life on my own or with a group of similarly adventurous misfits. If there was ever a time in modern society for such things, I thought, this was where I'd find it.

I was right on every count. But not in any of the ways I expected.

19:28 / 16.07.03

I was ignoring this thread because age is insignificant. I feel I'm only just coming out of adolescence at 27, and that's earlier than some people, and later than some people, but whatever--I don't feel old by any means.

Then the next day five threads on joycore show up and I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I'm off to shop for golf shoes, keep out of trouble.

19:38 / 16.07.03

Don't feel bad, Tommy. It's something that Flux started like three weeks ago. You're at joycore ground zero, really.

Nice shoes.

22:12 / 16.07.03

What has enraged me the second most this week (after my computer no being fixed yet) was the attempt by someone to make be feel entirely insignificant because im all of 18 months younger than someone.

We had to line in height order for part of a dance. I'm pretty short, but the girl in front of me turned around, and began to winge about how everyone behind her was younger than her, and asked them what year they were in at school. She said "Well I've left school." I told her that so had I. She turned around again, shouting "Yes, but I'm EIGHTEEN and you're only sixteen," whilst spitting in my face.

So if I dont grow by the time we have to perform it, and have to stand in front of her, being made feel small by a shortass, i'll have to learn exactly how to hit pressure points on the back of her knees.

Aaaahhh.... rage relief.

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