Cleaning Ads with Twisted Sister and Things That Make Me Feel Old

I've started feeling a bit old.  It has nothing to do with my upcoming birthday this month and very little to do with the fact that I am now the mother of a middle schooler.  (Although I will admit that seeing Twisted Sister on a Stanley Steemer commercial has me feeling slightly ancient.  But then a perverse part of me looks forward to the day when Justin Bieber will be advertising for Metamucil, making my kids feel the way I do now).

What has started making me feel old is observing the generation that's coming up behind me and thinking, "Wait.  They're going to be running the world some day?"  And then a little piece of me sinks down in despair as I fear for our future.

As a side note:  My sister has a different fear.  After she watched a special on how Legos are made, she developed an anxiety about someday being buried alive in small Lego pieces.

"They make 19 billion pieces a year!" she exclaimed.  "I live with 2 boys who are constantly losing Legos.  You know, those things don't break down and are probably half of what makes up every landfill in the United States."

So, basically her fear of the future has to do with waking up and suddenly wading through 4 feet of Legos as she tries to make her way to the shower.

Anyway, I'm sure that every age bracket has been through what I'm going through now.  I'm betting my mom, when I came home with the 5th hole in my left ear, began picturing a world where women CEOs wore cone bras (a la Madonna) to board meetings and the evening news was delivered in a Valley Girl accent.

And then she probably felt old.

My fear began this year when I went to my daughter's parent/teacher conference.  When I expressed my concern about her spelling, it was met with a dismissing wave of the hand and a, "She doesn't need to learn how to spell!  That's what spellcheck is for."

(I could hear my grandmother rolling over in her grave.  After all, the woman used to watch soap operas so that she could point out their grammatical errors.)

Visions of the future swam through my head as I pictured a world where no one spelled anything out (mainly because they didn't know how) and the president of the United States tweeting the State of the Union.

idk whats going on. no $$. this blows. #endofworld

The next generation will get less done because they will all be standing at sinks for a least an hour a day, waiting for them to turn on.  They will lose all ability to speak, preferring instead to text to each other over dinner, which will consist of a high-protein shake of indeterminate color and a Red Bull.  The women will all be stooped over due to a lifetime of carrying over-sized designer bags and the men will be preoccupied with how to faux-hawk their hair at different angles.  Everyone will be orange and on high doses of Vitamin D because of a heightened fear of sunlight and a love of spray tanning, which no one will notice anyway because they're all going to be too busy finding out what's going on in the world without really interacting with anyone in it and doing their make-up in their iPads (I watched a girl doing that yesterday on the plane and it made me wonder...what happened to just using a mirror???).

So, basically, we're raising a group of hyper, mute, Oompa Loompas with bad posture and weird hair.

I didn't mean for this to bring you down.  Again...I'm sure our parents all had the same worries, just as their parents before them.  I bet our grandparents all worried that the world would someday be run by a bunch of people with bowl cuts who, when asked about the state of affairs, replied with the word "groovy" and then started dancing like bobble-head dolls.  And I know that my parents, when I walked downstairs with zippers in my ears and all of my clothes looking like Freddy Krueger  was my best friend, probably had concerns that someday everyone walking the planet would be bald thanks to an overuse of Aqua Net.

But as I look out of my car window and see girls standing on the corner with at least one ass cheek showing, bent over their phones and twisting their nose rings...I can't help but feel a little ancient because I'm now part of the generation that doesn't understand the next one.  And then I look at my own children sitting in the car and smile a little, wondering what will make them feel old when their time comes.

& that mks me feel better. #gettingold