From an Old Friend...

I came to the crashing realization this month that I might be a few years older than most of my co-workers, professional associates and Facebook friends.  Who am I kidding; a few years older?  A few decades!

Oh sure, I guess I always knew that I might be the only one on the sales team who's ever seen an original episode of The Brady Bunch or Star Trek.  And sure, when my friends' nostalgia has them pining away for sitcoms I have never seen because I was too busy working every night in the nineties, I feel like a pretender.  Seriously though, who names a kid Topanga?

The gulf is wide - I have friends who can't remember a time when John Travolta wasn't fat.  Co-workers who have only seen the short version of Bugs Bunny cartoons, and who don't believe me when I describe the entire bullfighter episode as it was meant to be seen, or the opera singer versus the banjo playing Bugs.  I don't think any of them have the attention span to wait for the payoff.  Kids, I mean friends, there is nothing funnier than a fat Opera singer getting his payback.  You have to see the Bunny on the losing end of encounter after encounter to fully appreciate the brilliance of his final revenge.  I doubt you could find a television network willing to go the full length of a Bugs cartoon between commercials these days.

I work hard not to start a sentence with the words "in my day," but more and more I can't help myself.  What really brought the age difference home these past few weeks were the Facebook status updates, of which I'd like to say two things.

1.  I don't believe that all of your children graduated with honours from Senior Kindergarten or even their Grade 8 class.  I'm not calling you liars, just seriously deluded.  They can't all have graduated top of their class!  That would be like suggesting that no one came in the bottom, which would imply that no one has ever had to face the harsh light of failure, or second best, or last place.  That ain't right.  In my day we got our asses kicked once in a while.  Things can't have changed that much, have they?

2.  When my co-workers and peers share pictures of their kid's high school graduations, I feel a bit old.  My oldest kid graduated from high school the same year Topanga eloped with Cory.  (OK, I might have seen at least one episode of Boy Meets World).

Funny enough, I don't feel so old around all my friends having their very first babies.  At least two of my kids are of marrying age.  Maybe it won't be long before we're posting baby pictures, too.  Will it?  No really, how much longer are you going to make us wait?!?  Kids, by the time your mom and I were your age, we already had you.

I'm not getting any younger here.  Corey and Topanga didn't keep their parents waiting this long.