meeting of those who feel OLD and as if they do too many things at once

[SleepyWitch]

inspired by mir's meeting of those too young to drive, I thought I'd start a nursing home for those of us feel old/ worn out/ wonder how they got to be the person they are all of a sudden when they were somebody totally different only 20 years ago
if you feel any of these come on in and have a cuppa

today I thought of all of the things I somehow am: a tutor, a linguist (sort of), an A student , a writer ( *artsy fartsy* but it's true, I feel like "I'm a writer" even if I've only written half a handful of stories), a swimmer (yeah, it sounds grand. it's only a hobby and I'm not in a team or anything, but whenever I swim I feel like "I'm a swimmer" as opposed to "somebody who happens to go swimming"), a youthwork councillor/tutor/socially committed kind of person, one of 3 girls who run a group for international students.....

as a kid/teenager I was just myself.. I dunno how it happend???

[alhara]

you do realize unless you are lying in your profile you were 5... 20 years ago and that is not a fun age to be.... you wet yourself and you have go to school but you can´t read yet so schools no funn and the only music availble to you is like barney and junk. If i could go back and relive being 5 just that year and then go back to where i am now i would totally pass it up

[SleepyWitch]

i was in kindergarten when i was 5 and was kept under lock and key there till I was almost 7. where i live kindergarten means playing, singing, drawing, doing happy clappy baby things all day. We don't learn anything.

I did not wet my pants when I was 5!

what was I going to say (see I'm so old and scatterbrained I forget what I want to say midway through a post): yep, you're right, kindergarten/primary school sucked worse than being 25

[Stanislaw]

Heh...though the 20 years thing doesn't apply to me...I feel old:

- Gots me a new SUV
- Gots me a busy job: IT
- Gots me a crappy server at work
- Gots me a crappier work vehicle cause my boss didn't like the idea of buying a sports car for onsite repairs
- Gots me a bunch o responsibilities
- Gots me a copper bracelet for repetive motion strain in me rist
- Gots me a club membership...
- and gots me a toaster.

[SleepyWitch]

How old are you Stan?
outch repetitive motion strain sounds icky.
gotta go and take my pills (psychosomatic tummy)...
see, it's like at a nursing home already

[Virgil]

Great idea for a thread, Sleepy. I will have lots to contribute here. Too busy now to really delineate a bunch of old folks's gripes, but let's just say I was graduating college (Uni) before you were five.

[mir]

*sidles in*

Sleepy, i am owned.

and also, why am i feeling those symptoms you describe at 15? *fetches cane*

ok *sidles out*

[alhara]

yeah doc sometimes i forget things said to me like second before or things that happanded that morning and last year i pulled a mussle in my back(studey too hard if that makes any sense at all) and i couldn´t walk for a month i can´t play any sports all the bands i like are dead...my favorite movie is black and white. i can still eat solid food and am not offend by swear words but thats about as young as i get.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hmm...Five was a big year for me. School, reading for the first time, listening to Beethovan's sixth every night before I went to sleep...come to think of it not much has changed. My books just don't have as many pretty pictures as they used to. Actually I guess twenty years ago I was still four, so I wasn't reading yet and I was still in preschool. Of course back in preschool I was married in a big ceremony to a very handsome little boy who proposed with a big plastic jeweled ring, and now I'm free and single, so I suppose if anything I've gotten less mature and commited.

[SummerSolstice]

While the suggestion might seem ludicrous to some, I feel old because I'm finding it harder to relate to the kids I want to write for. I considered myself a kid for so long, but now the things "real" kids like often seem uncomfortably below my level. I've reached twice the lower bracket of my "ideal" age--about 9-12--and I'm finally going to big, bad, scary college, of which I've spent most of my schooling years in trepidation. So many of the kids' movies coming out these days look dumb, dumb, dumb, and the kids channels we get have slowly but surely cancelled each of the cartoons I've recorded and watched religiously for the past couple of years, replacing them with inane, poorly-drawn, formulaic shows. The Disney channel is a factory for untalented and underdressed pop-stars, Cartoon Network has been taken over by anime and plotless farces, and hand-animation films are officially extinct. KIDS these days!!!

....

...*lays head down on desk* I need a nap.

[Pendragon]

Butterfly

Hope is a gentle butterfly
riding on uplifting winds,
that raise it far above the chasm
into which my depression makes me descend.
It’s pretty, but it’s fragile,
torn by rivers of rushing air,
that finally sweep it away
and I never know just where.
But it leaves behind a chrysalis,
attached to some tiny twig
on the Tree of Life that still blooms there,
although it isn’t very big.
In time the pain will vanish,
the shattered mind will mend,
and there’ll be another butterfly
to ride the winds again.

DL Harris
© 1997

As a book collector, I have paperbacks on my shelves that are older than I, some original Ace copies of Edgar Rice Burroughs books from 1957, and some even older. I've spent 40 years in this area, and remember a lot of it. When a can of soda hit a quater a can and we thought that was bad, gas hit a dollar a gallon and people thought the end of time had come. I've seen the theater in town when it was busy, when it closed, when they were raising money to renovate it, and now, it's open again. I saw the house I grew up in destroyed in the great flood of 77, and lived through the time when it was 30 below zero outside this house. Times change, and the lanky cowboy becomes a 300+ guy that writes poetry. Go figure.

[Shalot]

I know I am old because I don't enjoy driving around at night anymore (too difficult to see). Also, due to continuous road constuction, the road may or may not be where it was the day before and they don't bother to line the road with the cones and the barrels (instead the cones and barrels are in the middle of where you're supposed to be driving) and of course there is no lighting except for your own headlights, which may or may not help you if someone has their fog lights on behind you in your rearview. And sometimes at night, the workers will move the barrels and cones -- I saw a guy doing this and he was wearing what was supposed to be a reflective vest but it was dirty and it didn't reflect so well and he is lucky I didn't hit him.

And of course, I hate the brats on their cell phones driving carelessly in cars that cost more than what I make in a year----yep I am old.

[Stanislaw]

How old are you Stan?
outch repetitive motion strain sounds icky.
gotta go and take my pills (psychosomatic tummy)...
see, it's like at a nursing home already

heh...only 20
yeah the repetitive motion strain is not fun...but the copper seems to be working...may I ask how old ye be?

[Shalot]

heh...only 20
yeah the repetitive motion strain is not fun...but the copper seems to be working...may I ask how old ye be?

Geez... what are you? A genius? You're too young for repetitive motion sprain!

[SleepyWitch]

is that poem by you, Uncle Pen?
i mean I knew you were a great poet, but: WOW!

As a book collector, I have paperbacks on my shelves that are older than I, some original Ace copies of Edgar Rice Burroughs books from 1957, and some even older. I've spent 40 years in this area, and remember a lot of it. When a can of soda hit a quater a can and we thought that was bad, gas hit a dollar a gallon and people thought the end of time had come. I've seen the theater in town when it was busy, when it closed, when they were raising money to renovate it, and now, it's open again. I saw the house I grew up in destroyed in the great flood of 77, and lived through the time when it was 30 below zero outside this house. Times change, and the lanky cowboy becomes a 300+ guy that writes poetry. Go figure

I like these lines, too you should make them the opening lines of a story!

Stan, I'm 25