At what point did you first feel "old"

In my senior year of college and one of my best friends from home just got engaged.

While this probably isn't the catalyst I think it is, it's f'in weird.

 

I started feeling older recently for two reasons:

1) I got out of the Navy almost as long ago as I was actually in (in uniform for nine years, out for eight).

2) If I'd stayed in, I'd be three years from retirement. Yikes.

A third reason, I could add, would be the fact that my 20-year high school reunion is three years away, and this is actually 10 years after I went to my ex-wife's 20-year high school reunion.

 

Engagements are no big deal, BRoth. It's when you start having to appear in 2-3 weddings a year, and you're just getting older by the day. Or when a HS friend is pregnant with her second kid.

Very odd.

 

Never!

I turn 35 next week and I feel like the same youthfully stupid dumb ass I've always been.

Only now with graying hair.

 

Or when your younger sister announces she's pregnant with her third kid. Or when the best date offer you've had in the last month comes from a 21-year-old that you could have taught as a sixth-grader. Engagements are nothing in the feeling old department.

 

Shut the fuck up about feeling old when you're still in college. Jesus H. Christ, you're barely old enough to drink.

My 20-year high school reunion is in two weeks. I don't feel old yet. Except when I walk past an Abercromie & Fitch or Wet Seal store.

 

Not until I moved back to NC, took this job and started being around high school kids most of the time. At 39 (40 now), I'm old enough to be their parent which is a discouraging thought.

 

1. When I found that Playboy's Playmates were all of a sudden younger than me.

2. When I found myself tuning into the local classic rock station rather than the one that always played new stuff.

 

The first time I felt old was when I was at the grocery store back in my hometown a few years ago and I saw this really cute guy working at one of the registers. I thought, damn, look at him, I'd ask him out. So I went through the checkout line for a closer look ... and saw his nametag. Ends up it was a kid I babysat when I was in junior high. He was working to save money for his sophomore year of college.

Any time I watch an NHL Hall of Fame induction, as well. When Dale Hawerchuk got inducted in '01, that's when it hit me that the players I grew up watching were going to make up the inductee pool from there on out.

 

I wouldn't say it made me feel old, but I knew the odd chance that I'd strike lightning in a bottle and become an athlete of note was when Boris Becker won Wimbledon. He's a year younger than I am.

 

I did feel old when I turned 40. Then I ran into spnited on here, and the feeling passed.

 

I'm 37 now and feel younger and better than I have in 10 years.

Of course, had I not started working out regularly and turned myself into a newbie biking nut -- 60 minutes of hills this morniing -- I'd probably be sporting a gut, unable to chase down even my two-year-old and rolling out of bed with far too many aches and pains.

I'm probably going to feel real old, though, when my first kid graduates from high school in six years. A little older when she graduates from college, older still when she gets married and again when she has my first grandchild.