You Don’t “Feel Old”
Oldness is not a feeling, and young people are not a threat.
I’ve heard people of all ages claim they “feel old”. Sometimes when a colleague learns my age, and discovers that I am younger than they might have imagined, they tell me that I’ve made them “feel old”. Many of my childhood friends are now entering their 30s — whenever someone’s birthday comes around, there is talk of becoming old and feeling old. I’ve even heard 20-year-old students of mine say that they “feel old” as they plan their first-ever legal drink.
It seems there is no basement to what can count as old, and no restriction on who can feel old. It’s unclear in any of these contexts what “old” really means.
People “feel old” in response to all kinds of ridiculous things — from the rebooting of Hellboy, to the birth of a friend’s child. When we notice that people younger than us don’t share our pop cultural references, we say we feel old. When we realize our bodies are changing and can’t process alcohol the way they once did, we say we feel old. When I watched this video of Neil Cicierega talking about the flash videos and MIDI songs he created at 14, I thought I felt old, because I was comparing my adult self to his childhood accomplishments.
But in reality, none of these observations actually make us older. They don’t…
