I thought getting married would make me old...

...but it turns out getting older makes me old.

Yeah, yeah, I know I am not actually old.  I just have been hit by the startling and strange revelation that some parts of my childhood are never-heard-of to kids as old as middle school now.  It's strange.  I am part of the "young folk", but not part of the "really young folk".  I am considered an adult by those small folk.  This is odd.  And vaguely unsettling.

This was brought on by the discovery of a shoebox in my old room full of "mixed" cassette tapes from my youth (that is, into mid high-school).  These tapes were laboriously made by my sisters and I by either holding a cassette recorder up to the radio speakers when a good song came on or by selecting individual songs from our compiled cds and pressing "record" on the cassette player in my stereo at exactly the right time.  We listened to those mix tapes with ridiculous pride for years.  I realize how sad that is now because, well, we were children and had terrible taste in music.

I have great memories of making those tapes, but I realized that most kids nowadays have absolutely nothing to do with cassettes.  Their "mix tapes" are playlists now.  If I get lucky I will find a kid that still makes mix cds.  I used cassettes.  I am ancient.

I also am getting all set in my musical ways.  I know what I like and I am fine with saying what I don't like.  I don't listen to screaming music any more.  I have stopped pretending that I will like country.  I am sick to death of all that punk/rock and pop/punk I used to listen to.  I like classic rock.  I like folk.  I like jazz.  I like bluegrass.  I like some indie stuff.  And I think most rappers are imbeciles.  Someday, perhaps even someday soon, smal children will say I listen to old-people music.  I will need to be ok with that.

I don't like to stay up all night anymore.  I will do it every once and a while and I will even stay up late sometimes.  But joining the ranks of the employed-at-an-office has forced me to get up early-ish.  This requires me to go to bed earlier or I cease to function.  Yes, I am lame.  But I am also making money.  This is good for that whole pay-bills-and-buy-food thing I was going for.

I think I need to write a Murtaugh list.  And maybe combine it with a list of things I am too young for.  Then maybe I can figure out what I am supposed to be doing at my age.  It has been a mystery to me up to this point.

I am too old for:
- taking long unpaid internships instead of a real job.
-wearing anything that makes me look like I am about to pull a skateboard out of my backpack.
-getting a facial piercing.
-going for days at a time without six consecutive hours of sleep.
-subsisting on a diet of foods entirely covered in cheese or frosting.
-wearing any form of body glitter.
-dying my hair any color not found in nature

I am too young for:
-paying for hotels if there is a couch, futon, or apartment floor I can sleep on instead.
-going to bed before midnight on weekends.
-eating things like bran and wheat germ consistently.
-drinking only expensive beers.
-settling down in one place permanently.
-talking about the state of my bowels.  seriously, no one wants to hear about that.  ever.

O, this will be added to.  Throw me more things that we, collectively, are either too young for or too old for.

Off to that job.  I'm too young for this office stuff.