Me?
I scorn my friends for going home early on fridays, for the night being over at eleven fifteen with tubes and trains back to suburbia. I skulk off and lament the days when we went home after the sun came up.

I scorn my friends for having been late to the pub due to 'work responsibilities', while I slunk out at half four. I've worked there four years, but never applied for a promotion (when they existed in the public sector) because I'll be outta there in six months, always out in six months.

I scorn their mortgages. I intend to find university number four and add to my collection of qualifications I will likely never use, so a house would only get in my way. They marry, have kids, some divorce. Those things aren't for me, not in my plans.

For the last two years I have woken in the middle of the night, gripped with terror, that I'm the one that's doing it badly wrong.

I am 36.
( cs1ca, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 21:03, 9 replies)

Teaching in a university
Realising that today's HE students were born after I graduated is bad enough, but what really makes me feel old is having to show them how to use a cassette language lab. Most of them start by trying to put the tape in back to front.

On the other hand, I still fit into the suit I bought for job interviews when I was their age.
(lolwhites, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 20:51, Reply)

I miss Woolworths Pick 'n' Mix
and if you don't know what I'm on about, fuck off you young twat.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 20:46, 2 replies)

Asking for ID
They can be born in 1994 for gods sake.
Every fucking time it makes me feel old.
Also, they swan around in Nirvana t-shirts when they weren't even born when Kurt was alive.
Here ends my old person rant.
( monkeyboyalpha jumping on the bandwagon since, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 20:03, Reply)

The length of time since you last checked your Friends Reunited account
is probably a longer period of time than between you finishing school to when joining Friends Reunited sounded like a good idea.
(Monchberter Can't go wrong with Doom, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:57, 2 replies)

Kids...
who have no idea what a tape cassette or vynil record are. Don't know they're born putting all your music on an iPod. Walkman with one tape in it and another in your pocket plus some spare batteries. Bah humbug etc...
(Outrun Is it the weekend yet?, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:53, 2 replies)

I'm reading through all this and thinking "You old farts!"
And then I realised I was thinking this on the way home from an appointment. With my tailor.

Damn.
(The Luggage is haunted..., Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:48, 1 reply)

Worse than realising you're getting old
Is realising that you're witnessing a friend realise they're getting old.

Especially when that friend had that "i'll die before i'm 27" attitude to life and they're now past that particular milestone with half a lifetimes worth of utterly shite short term decisions behind them.

Still, I hear a lot of people are out of work these days with limited skills and experience so I guess it's not as embarrassing as it used to be.
(Monchberter Can't go wrong with Doom, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:46, Reply)

I remember when all this was fields
Now it's collections and tags and key value stores.
( wakeupandsmellthebacon, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:44, 1 reply)

32 in a week
and already in a folk-punk band.

Fuck.
(Monchberter Can't go wrong with Doom, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:41, 1 reply)

For those of us over 45.
I hate to admit this, but clothes with a bit of "give" are definitely on my preferred list. It's not about letting yourself go. It's just that aging does things to your body that makes some clothes unbearably uncomfortable. Gone are the days when I would squeeze into the tightest jeans possible and bear the agony of stomach cramps all night, just to look good. (or so I thought) Sometimes, you just have to relax your vanity and enjoy life with a touch of comfort. Or may be getting older makes you see sense.
(Woofie, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:40, Reply)

I recently told someone I was worried I'd die young.
They looked at me and said "but you aren't young".
I suppose it's one less thing to worry about.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:27, Reply)

2002 was a decade ago.
My mother in law is one of those 'everything was better in the old days' people.
To be honest, I recon in the 70s and 80s she moaned about how shit it was compared to the 60s, and if she was around in the 60s I recon she'd do the same.
Chart music is aesthetically offensive, no exaggeration. You ever heard of nicky minge and katy perry?! Fuck me that hurts my ears! I will say however, that the non-main-stream-music-with-instruments stuff is present and I'v heard some cracking bands recently, and always will.
So she gave me this 'modern music is terrible' lecture, which is painfully monotonous. Defending my generation I argued that on the contrary, I know a shit load of contemporary bands, which deserve artistic merit. The white stripes and the strokes are classic, raw and just fucking quality.
No, that was ten years ago.
The white stripes 'elephant' came out A DECADE AGO!
2002, was a DECADE AGO.
In two years, it will have been a decade since 'Friends' finished.
Topshop have a '90s' range, which is considered 'retro'
The other day I was telling my cousin how Trafalgar square was full of pigions which you could hold and feed, she looked at me in awe.
We are not in the naughties, we are in the teens.
In ten years we will refer to our decade as 'THE TWENTIES'
In ten years, when I ask my kid to 'wind the window up' in the car she will say 'what the fuck you talking about??'
(shezam slouching towards nirvana., Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:26, 7 replies)

also I just seem to be getting quite forgetful these days

( vladimir, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:25, 1 reply)

I keep forgetting I've done things, and then doing them again, silly me

( vladimir, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:24, Reply)

I keep forgetting what I logged in for

( vladimir, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:24, Reply)

I've been a member here for over 10 years
And next week I turn 45

I am fucking old
( Darryn.R, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:14, 2 replies)

I'm quite baby-faced
and regularly got IDed for many years. So for me, it was when, with the coming of some grey hairs and a bit of proper stubble (rather than bumfluff), I actually went more than a few months without having to produce ID to buy a pint. I was about 28 at the time.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:10, 2 replies)

I feel I'll be posting a lot in this one
First maths lesson at secondary school we were introduced to two pieces of technology that we were assured would be necessary in our later lives. The Comptometer (a mechanical adding machine) and the slide rule.
When I finally did my GCE maths I was allowed a calcuator - which cost the equivalent of 1/4 of a skilled man's wages at the time, for which I carried THREE spare PP9 batteries, just in case.

* all fields etc*
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:06, Reply)

It's all about the prices
The thing that makes me feel old is that I'm able to say 'it wasn't like that when I started xxxxxxxing'. Prices of certain things have just absolutely rocketed over the last ten years, way out of proportion with inflation. It's unfair because it's provided a demarcation that really isn't of my doing, and I'm not old at all.

Cinema is the most obvious example. This weekend I went to the cinema and two tickets and two drinks cost me £30. How the hell did that happen? Surely just a few years ago it was under a tenner. And booze - the price of booze, dearie me. Just ten years ago a pint was under £2. It's doubled in the last ten years, after decades of, er, *not* doubling every ten years. The price of petrol seem astonishing, compared to what it was a decade ago.

The length of time isn't really enough to make me feel old, but the change is.

Not that you get much change from a tenner these days, mind...
(Land of Green Ginger It's dreamy weather, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 19:03, 5 replies)

10 reasons why I feel old
Lots of things make me feel old, especially as I now work with a load of youngsters in their 20s...
1. They learn how to use Word and Excel at school!!! Our primary school had 1 BBC Pet between all of us, and we considered ourselves cutting edge. Secondary School had about 12 computers and the Computing teacher (seconded from Maths) knew f'all about how to use them. I had to pick it up as I went along...
2. I am starting to like album chart music again, I have noticed that "retro" means about 20 years old so this has happened twice to me now
3. I can remember when lecturers used acetates. Say this to the kids in the office and they think it's some kind of chemical high
4. I can remember having to buy records because that was the only way of owning music
5. The youngsters think it's cool to talk like Mr T. Yes I can remember the A team first time round so wot so wot. Yet you say catch phrases from your youth e.g. buzzing, yarn in a barn, etc and they look at you like sh*t
6. I have no interest whatsoever in kids TV. Dora the Explorer, Dexters Lab etc. all are drivel compared with Wombles, Bagpuss and Cities of Gold
7. All the cool DJs I remember from Radio 1 are now working for Radio 2 (at least not Radio 4 - yet!)
8. All the really funny comedians I remember are dead
9. I am having to care for my parents, not the other way round
10. I don't give a monkeys that the youths laugh at me for enjoying Morris dancing and folk music
(biscuitsocks random gene expression, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 18:42, 10 replies)

A few years ago I worked in a library at a sixth form college.
Part of the job was loaning out DVDs to students, and occasionally giving them recommendations. One lad, it turned out, had never seen The Matrix. As he was hunting for something fun to watch over the weekend (yeah yeah, educational, tax payers, layabout students, yadda yadda) I suggested he gave it a go. His response?

"Nah mate I don't like old films."
(Captain Skippy pooed in a bag and left it on your doorstep, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 18:33, 3 replies)

I don't care if you feel old
as long as you do it OFF MY LAWN.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 18:18, Reply)

I realised the other day that my immediate boss
is the same age as my nephew.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Thu 7 Jun 2012, 18:18, 2 replies)

Jurassic Park is old enough to vote and buy alcohol. Which reminds me of this gem from XKCD.com.


(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 18:05, 4 replies)

Sir, you can keep your new-fangled loom.
I shall not have Lucifer's contraption blackening the name of my poorhouse, by god sir I shall not.

Bartholomew, get back to the wheel, the millet shall not grind itself!
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 18:03, 1 reply)

Kids do it to you
I was trying to explain to my kids that we are a family with very long generations. My grandad was born in 1844 (other people's grandads were too young for WWII). And I was telling them that my Dad was born before aeroplanes, before broadcast radio, before TV (before John Logie Baird's TV). They weren't interested. So I said "I was born before computers". Their eyes went all round and their mouths dropped open "YOU WERE BORN BEFORE COMPUTERS??!!!??". That got to me, because I was 22 when mainframe computers really started selling in large numbers, about 5 years before the microchip was invented at Fairchild.
(GreyWolf lives outside LHC blast radius, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 18:01, 4 replies)

I have this Saturday night off.
This isn't a particularly common event as I work in a pub, and have done in one form or another for all of my working life.
This Saturday is one of my friends' birthdays, and as I have the night off I'm going out and hitting the town with him.
As the weekend crawls inexorably nearer I'm getting more and more pissed off at the thought of going out. it seems that my ideal Saturday night would now be spent indoors with a bottle of rum and a book and the wife...
(Paolo Nutini's Bikini Better than Frederick Fleet's optometrist, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 17:49, Reply)

I have genuinely enjoyed listening to Radio 4 ever since I was a kid.
At university, the hipsters thought this awfully cool of me, while others thought I was trying to be "ironic".

But there is nothing like hearing the shipping forecast on a wild wet and windy night, and there's nothing quite like waking up to the pips, and the sound of John Humphries giving a polititian a battering.

During the MPs expenses scandal, the Today Programme was the only radio show to waken to.

Sorry - this post appears to be about Radio 4, not Getting Old. Fuck you, youngsters - I don't care.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 17:31, 10 replies)

Also
I avoided going to a friend's house for a night of drinking and listening to music because A) it would upset the neighbours and more importantly B) I can no longer be arsed waking up on a floor.

It seems like yesterday I awoke on a camping trip with my feet on fire after having passed out too close to the campfire and burst out laughing. What's happened to me?
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 17:24, Reply)