The First Step of the Aging Process

"Old man, take a look at my life.  I'm a lot like you."--Neil Young

Let me just point out that I don't feel particularly old in the grand scheme of things.  But right now, I'm twenty-two years old and I'm starting to feel what I figure is going to be a lifelong process of feeling old.

I'm sure that if five people read this, at least one of them thought, "What the hell, John?  You're fucking 22 years old and you feel old?  How do you think I feel?"  My answer would be, probably old.  It's not to say that you are old; it's just to say that you feel old.  And it's the negative form of old that I'm feeling.  Not like being a senior in high school and feeling like because of your relatively advanced age (compared to the rest of your school), you're the shit.  But feeling like you're no longer the hottest thing out there.

For instance, when I was seventeen years old, a senior in high school, and able to actually drive rather than depending on mommy for rides, I felt cool.  This isn't to say that I was cool--at least the people I went to school with would probably disagree.  This isn't some kind of moaning about high school session--like 95% of people in high school, I had some friends and therefore couldn't logically be cast as a social underling but I also wasn't friends with every single person in my graduating class and therefore wasn't really trying to be the king of the castle.  But what's important is that I felt cool.  Seventeen year old me wasn't that radically different from twenty-two year old me: Slightly less chubby, a decent bit more shy, but not overwhelmingly different on the grand scale.  The thing that made me not feel old wasn't merely being five years younger--it was experiencing the unknown.

The first time I ever drove a car without somebody in the passenger's seat was the day after I got my driver's license in July of 2006--I drove my mom's van up to my school to work on some stuff for the school newspaper.  Now, by any reasonably standard, driving a van to school during the summer to work on a freaking school newspaper is not "cool", but it was the first time I'd done it.  Hell, I felt that same sense of exhilaration in August when I drove to my first day of my first full time job.  It wasn't because I was particularly excited to be on the road at six in the morning or because I really wanted to do the job--it was because I was turning a new page.  A couple of weeks ago, I drove my 2002 Mercury Cougar--both the first stick shift I've ever driven and the first car I've ever actually fully purchased on my own--and I felt completely and totally alive.  It didn't matter that most of the time I was stuck in a traffic jam and it wouldn't have mattered if I'd killed it a couple of times--it was new.

I started to feel old earlier today when waiting in line at Taco Bell (normally I'd go drive thru, but a combination of wanting to thoroughly research the menu and not being crazy about drive-thrus in a stick shift yet brought me inside).  The guys after me in line didn't seem considerably different in age than I was, but I noticed that they were wearing Class of 2012 high school t-shirts.  So it dawned on me, I'm five years older than these guys.  When they began high school I was a fucking college sophomore.  I can vividly remember back in 1996 when the St. Louis Blues traded for Wayne Gretzky.  Granted I was pretty young at the time and fully realize it.  But they were two years old.


So all of a sudden I felt old.  I figured I wouldn't feel that way until at least my thirties, and I'm sure I will feel that way in eight years, but I felt it to some degree today.  So I started thinking about music, because it's the entertainment medium that I consider the most reliant on being "cool."  Now, to me, and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, there are three definitive albums I consider to be on a different level than pretty much every other album in my collection--Prince's Purple Rain, The Sex Pistols's Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols, and Oasis's Definitely Maybe.  For the latter two albums, the vocalists (John Lydon and Liam Gallagher, respectively) were twenty-one years old when the albums were released.  Prince was the old man of the group.  He turned twenty-six earlier that month.

Now I realize this is a somewhat insane comparison--I'm not a rock musician nor do I intend to become one. But I do consider these to be gold standards of cool.  But then I thought, why do I consider these three frontmen to be "cool"?  It's really pretty simple reasons.  Prince is cool because he's overwhelmingly talented--he's a tremendous singer, guitarist, songwriter, and stage presence.  John Lydon is cool because of his persona--he's rock's most beloved smartass and even though he can't carry a tune, he became a rock star because of the intense respect of his blunt honesty.  Liam Gallagher is cool because he approaches the microphone with unbelievable swagger--he's a somewhat mediocre vocal talent but when you walk in and sing like you fucking own the room, it rubs off and makes you cool.

The traits that make Prince cool, as you may have noticed, are completely different than the traits that make Lydon and Gallagher cool.  And if you look at these three men today--respectively aged 53, 55, and 38--it's hard to deny who is the coolest today.  John Lydon, while still an entertaining interview, spends most of his time publicly trolling and reuniting with the Sex Pistols when he wants to make a quick buck.  Liam Gallagher fronts the adequate band Beady Eye while being mocked the world over for being a guy born in 1972 who wears his hair like he graduated high school in 1973 (and also that said man is currently living in 1975).  Prince, however, while utterly reclusive compared to the other two, remains cool.  Because style, while cool, doesn't last.  Looks don't last.  Talent, passion, and heart does last.  And those things are cool.

I kind of realized after thinking about it that I don't have a lot to worry about.  First of all, I'm probably not cool (and if I am not, I don't really give enough of a shit to try to become cool).  And second of all, the traits that I imagine would make me considered cool (all of which I imagine are based on personality, since I look pretty damn ordinary) are intangible.  The people who have to worry about aging are the vacuous morons I knew in high school whose entire life motivation was looking good, drinking, driving a fancy car, and looking good.  As for me, I'll just sit back and say fuck it.  Bring it on, old age.  I won't be giving enough of a shit to notice.