Getting older is inevitable? Like, whatever
by Beth Teitell

Tuesday, April 24, 2001

Nothing's working. I'm using the soy eye cream from a Newbury Street boutique. I'm watching the WB network. I've special-ordered Britney Spears' new novel. And yet, I'm getting older. Where's the justice?

The signs of aging have been building for some time - the complaining that the music in the gym is too loud, the dippy pre-sets on my radio, the use of the word ``dippy'' - but I'd been ignoring them. I continued to shop at the Gap, to pepper my sentences with the word ``like,'' as in, ``I was like, whoa,'' to not only read Cosmo Girl, but to take the quizzes (What's your secret power? Once you find out, you'll be rolling in money).

But you wake up one day and you realize you've reached an age that used to sound really old to you. An age at which you imagined you'd be all set in your career, an age at which you thought you'd no longer fear the dentist, or worry about whether your parents like the new house you're buying. An age at which you thought you'd no longer care about your appearance. Yeah, right.

My day came last week, when a friend pointed out that we are now the age - 39 - that another friend's boyfriend was when she met him 15 years ago. We were 24 then and he was, my God, an old man.

What does that say about us? Are we old men?

``I remember hearing that Richard wouldn't wait in line at restaurants and thinking what a curmudgeon he was,'' my friend said. ``Now I won't wait in line at restaurants.''

Me neither. But that doesn't make us as elderly as he was back then, does it? I mean, I'm just a kid.

Everything's relative, I guess. Yesterday I asked a 9-year-old if nine had ever seemed old to her, when she was seven or eight, say.

``Well,'' she said, ``when I was in third grade'' - last year - ``the fourth graders seemed really big to me.''

``Do you feel really big now?'' I asked.

``No,'' she said, ``I just feel normal.''

That's how I feel, too: normal. Until I'm forced to think about it, that is. Until some pierced wiseacre doesn't card me, or calls me ``ma'am.''

Can't he tell I'm just normal?

The problem, I realized after a few glasses of wine with some friends, is not us, but others. My high school friends still look normal to me, just like they did when we were sophomores. They certainly don't look like the teachers, like Miss Shayler, or Mrs. Reinstock. But the second you let down your guard, people are born after you, and not only that, but are born in the years in which you graduated from high school or college or got married. The nerve.

One day you're the new kid at work, the next you're the grizzled veteran, reminiscing about how it used to be, saying things like, ``in my day,'' and referring to people who retired 20 years ago, before the upstarts were even in day care.

``I'm viewed as the old guy at the office,'' a 38-year-old man told me. ``I'm supposed to balance out the aggressive young pups. I still see myself as the aggressive young pup - not as the institutional memory. It's kind of weird.''

He recalled how when he started at his job, lo those many years ago, he pitied the old-timers. ``You wondered what went wrong with their careers,'' he said. ``You were eager to talk to them to avoid their mistakes. Now people are interested in talking to me.''

Me, too. Uh, oh.

``You know what I'm looking forward to,'' a friend said, ``turning 50. Then I really won't care.''

Yeah, me neither.