I had to post this Formerly Hot moment before I forgot (which I’ve been doing more and more–not exactly early Alzheimers so much as Shit-For-Brains Syndrome, an egregiously under-researched condition about which little is known except that it’s epidemic in the Formerly community.) Perhaps it’s more of a Formerly Cool moment.
My friend Susan told me about it while she was in town on a massive media tour to promote this new gadget her company and one of the well-known youth market apparel and accessories favorites are putting out for the supercool chicks of tomorrow. No worries: you’re not expected to know about it unless you have tweens and teens, in which case you already do.
Back in Los Angeles, right before she came, Susan hosted an intimate little launch gathering for this new thingy dingy. 400 people showed up. Susan reported that it was a major LA happening–a ticket so white hot that the venue isn’t disclosed until shortly before the event–and a smashing success. The attendees were so off-the-charts cool that even if I were cool enough to know which names to drop, and you were cool enough to recognize them, the mere repeating of them by people as uncool as us would make them lose their cool dust. And that’s a risk I just can’t take.
So Susan was at the party, hanging back, enjoying her handiwork and watching the cool 20something people do what cool 20something people do these days (which apparently involves–shocker!–drinking, playing music and dancing), until the much-younger execs from the groovy partner company came over.
“Are you OK?” one asked, looking her in the eye and touching her reassuringly on the arm. She answered that yes, of course, she was fine, thanks.
The first time that happened, Susan thought it was nice that they were checking in. “But they came over every half hour to check on me, to see how I was holding up! ‘Are you OK?’ I was like, I’m old, but I’ve been to a party before.”
My friend Susan. The wildest woman on our freshman hall, the jello wrestler, the hockey player, the one who could West African dance any partner into a quivering, sweating heap on the floor (and, by the way, still could)–was being checked on like someone’s great aunt in a wheelchair who’d just had a stroke and was parked in the corner of the bar mitzvah. “Are you OK? Can I get you some kugel?”
Susan, unlike me, isn’t even 42 yet.
I know that this is normal. I know that each generation, including our own, thinks they invent everything they experience when they do it for the first time–sex, love, heartbreak, Nutella. And most of the time, that’s fine. I love watching my 6-year-old daughters master the art of shoelace tying or wheeling and dealing at Monopoly Jr. and then dismissing my efforts to share my wisdom. Let them figure it out for themselves.
But when people in their 20s see you as so crusty that even after you organize the party they’re worried that you’ll wander off and fall into the pool unless you’re properly supervised, there’s a problem. And guess what? The problem is not you.
OH WAIT: P.S. I have a new post up at More.com! They have lots of cool stuff going on over there.
May 29, 2009 at 9:19 am
Hmmm….bogus to say the least, BUT…you know all those expressions like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and children turn out like their parents, well, in the same vein, if those younger and sillier hang around your friend Susan long enough, perhaps we’ll all be better off!
May 29, 2009 at 9:20 am
My two-year-old asks me “You OK?” all the time. Mostly, I think he’s just parroting me. But he’s a long ways away from reaching the emotional mature place where you know how to “check on” someone subtly.
May 29, 2009 at 9:38 am
Need more info about this party!!!
Thankfully all the 20 something people I know, either younger relatives or kids of friends, still invite me (on occasion) to parties they’re throwing or attending. I’ve never gone. I think I’ll accept the next invite.
May 30, 2009 at 4:55 pm
I never come into contact with people in their twenties anymore–in the suburbs, it’s all moms and dads and little kids and surly teens. I think all of the twenty year olds are living in Brooklyn or teaching English in China or something else so that they don’t have to be in the suburbs. After reading your post, I’m glad. I think I’d swat a twenty-five year old for asking me if I’m ok allthe time!
May 30, 2009 at 7:07 pm
We have law students working in our office this summer. I was driving to Monterey with two of them for a mandatory settlement settlement conference. They were telling me that somebody from my office had given a guest lecture in their class, but they didn’t remember the name. I was asking questions to try to figure out who it was, and was about to ask “was he young, like me?” but then realized that such a question might be an oxymoron to 23-year-olds.
June 7, 2009 at 10:43 am
Good fortune navigated me to your page. I love your splat! Say whatever I want to however the hell I wanta say it” attitude …LOL! Thought I’d share MY recent “God I must really be getting old” experience.
I went panning for gold with my niece Jennifer and nephew-in-law Mack, two 30-something entrepreneurs, who kindly treated me to the outing for my birthday. During this lovely outing, I registered my first moment of age consciousness, observing a wrinkled brow accompanied by a politely concerned, “Are you ok?” as the heat of the day set in while we worried the tiny bits of gold from the buckets of dirt by water torture.
“I’m fine,” I responded,somewhat taken aback by his solicitude, making a quick mental check to make sure that I really WAS fine. The combination of cool water running in the sluice and the shade of the little shed had negated the 90+ temp for me completely.
Mack didn’t look convinced (I remembered how at his age I had thought, “God, I hope she doesn’t overheat and have a stroke or something” when many years ago I took my 88 year old aunt gem mining. SHE didn’t, because SHE was fine too…lol)
When I pushed my glasses up to my forehead so I could try and distinguish the little gold flake I thought I saw in my pan from the bits of detritus surrounding it, my nephew asked if I wanted him to go back to the general store and get a magnifying glass…he’d be glad to get one for me! now I don’t know anyone in the world whose bifocals actually WORK at the magnification level they are supposed to so I don’t even think twice about squinting things into focus sans glasses, but I could almost see his thoughts like a banner across his forehead, “Oh, bless her heart she can’t SEE!”
Anyway, this decrepit shell helped them figure out how to use the machine that saved a lot of time and extracted the gold FOR us–we probably had a grand net worth of under $10 at the end of the day–and pointed out that many of the “rocks” that were being discarded in favor of the shiny stuff were in fact gems and interesting fossils so that they would SEE (YAY for my geology classes that I still remember..sort of..) and generally had a great time dispelling the illusion that all people over 40 were subject to death at any moment.