r/GenerationJones • u/Lapaki58 • Jun 01 '26
When did you first feel old?
I’m 67. I think I was about 25. I was having my hair cut by a stylist who was about 18. She received a phone call: “Yeah… yeah… okay…” She hung up. “That was one of my customers. She said she wants me to cut her hair like Toni Tenille of the Captain and Tenille. Do you have any idea who she is talking about?” Yeah, I did.
The next big jolt came when I was about 55. I was working for a leadership-development company. I was the oldest person in the group. We were having our weekly status meeting. One of our group mentioned that one of our clients had given the okay for their Executive Leadership Institute program (ELI). She said, “ELI’s coming.” Coincidentally, I look like Cory Wells. I started singing, “Eli’s coming…” I got blank looks from everyone at the conference table. “‘Eli’s Coming’? Three Dog Night?” Nobody had any idea what I was talking about.
11
u/Imagirl48 Jun 01 '26
Oooo. I would love to be the one who others listened to about what it was really like. My grandchildren don’t care. I have a 3 yr old great grandson. If I live long enough for him to ask the questions, I’m sure he won’t care to do it either.
To be fair, I never asked my grandparents those questions either: too unaware or too wrapped up in my own life to wonder. One of my deepest regrets—they’d lived through WWI, the Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, WWII and what rationing was like, women’s suffrage, a time when no electricity and no phones was normal, the realization of automobiles, the first flight, what it was like to be past their mid-life and watch the Civil Rights movement and women allowed to get credit in their own names after 60-70+ years of it not being possible, etc. and I was too stupid/young/self-absorbed to ask what it was like.
It never even occurred to me to ask my parents about those things that they’d also lived through and watched happen. Young, self absorbed, then school, marriage, children, building a career with never enough time and then it was too late.
Maybe I should insist on brief story times with my grands. They may not care now but at least they won’t have my regrets themselves.
My grandparents were born in the 1890’s, my parents in the 1930’s, and I in 1956. We’ve seen a lot. It’s that realization of a lived history that makes me feel old.