Here's a piece I did for dugaldo.blogspot.com, reposted because it's kind of amazing.
I'm almost 29. I throw up a little every time I think about it. It's just a number, but what 35 year old woman* would shop at a store called Forever 29? I don't look 29. I sure don't act like it, but what matters are my old man memories.
I remember when you didn't want or need to know everything. No, knowing the definition of fecundity or settling a dispute among friends regarding the difference between Chris Tucker and Chris Rock will not make you a better person, it will just add to the list of things you'll look up and never use. I wonder if celebrities ever google us to see what cellphone camera movies we’ve starred in, what malls we've worked at, or the community colleges we went to?
So in a sense the older you get the more you get displaced from the present. Your memories don’t allow yourself to be present.
I'm sorry the impossibilities are over. Mommy isn’t there to say, you can be anything you want, even president. I can't quit my job and join the NFL or NBA anymore, I can't go to school again and choose a new major, I can't become mayor. It is a fuckin tragedy, like that guy who invented a cell phone that could play music because it had a cassette player built in. It boasted having dual cassette decks so you could have twenty, count em, twenty songs on your five pound phone without opening the deck to insert a new cassette. He was a laughing stock when his coworker presented the cellphone/mp3 player at the annual stock holders meeting.
But,
Maybe instead of the memories serving as concrete points in time for comparisons, they can serve as stepping stones. Maybe we can reflect on the improvements around our world and in our selves. Maybe I’m an adult prodigy. There is a stigma with youth and genius. When I was in Mexico, no one was amazed at my Spanish skills, they said my grammar sounded like I was in Middle School, but if I was a first grader and sounded like an eighth grader I would be a prodigy. See? You have to have your breakthroughs early. Keep these things in mind, Kobe Bryant didn’t become great until he was in his late twenties, same with Kanye West. So age doesn't limit possibilities a long as your're improving. Age can be viewed as a door opening wider and wider rather than a door closing ever so slightly everyday.
Above is Brad Pitt at 39 and Will Smith at 39. I guess my best days are yet to come.
*speaking of 35 year old women
La Roux - Bulletproof
Why does she look hella old? She’s only twenty one. And why does she have a voice of someone much, much, hotter?
