How I Know I am Old

I walked through the uni this afternoon and saw a casually dressed young man with a knapsack walked by. Just when I thought he was a uni student, I saw other kids walked by, nodded respectfully and greeted him, “Good afternoon, Sir”… oh… he is a lecturer… I was immediately reminded of my age. Well, on further reflection, I share here a list of observations and takes on how I know I have grown old - with age… 

• When people start telling me, “Hey, age is just a number”… and I didn’t even say anything. 

• When I start to find some bus drivers hot, and I take the public bus and sit right at the front just to watch the bus driver do his job, ogling his arms and how each muscle twitches as he drives along. OMG, many of them look young, muscular and full of youthful vigour. 

• When I book a taxi or Grab (the Uber equivalent) and, just like with bus drivers, think they are young but wonder whether I will be safe. Also, I sometimes book these rides and then take a screenshot and zoom into the picture to see if whoever accepted my booking is cute! LOL…

• When I go to the clinic and/ or hospital and find the doctors young and kiddish. I’m like - OMG! They could be my kids! Or OMG! They behave like kids! And of course, I admit I even question their credibility and whether they are even qualified, considering how young they look! 

• When the songs I sing at karaoke sound foreign to many because they are younger and do not identify with the songs I know… and they just let me sing by myself. The more upfront ones would simply say, “Baba, the songs you sing are very before our time…” (read - prehistoric). 

• When the songs that appear on my YouTube are categorised as “old songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s” or “golden hits from the past” and feature singers I know so well: The Carpenters, Donny and Marie Osmond, Madonna, Alphaville, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Oliver Newton John, etc. You get it. 

• When the shows and MTVs that appear on my YouTube feature actors and actresses and I go: OMG! Brad Pitt looks like a kid in the show… (ditto for Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Renée Zellweger, etc), and then I realise the show was some 20-30 over years ago and these actors are in their late-50s or more now! 

• When I read the daily news and go - what the hell is this journalist saying? Such amateurish writing and poor analysis of events. And to convince I am not out of line, I even run the article by Gen AI and Gen AI agrees with me, but says diplomatically that what the journalist wrote is simply a younger generation’s perspective - and that I, being a more mature (read - old) person who has gone through much, will perhaps have a different perspective. 

So yes, the young man turned out to be “Sir” and somewhere along the way, I became “Uncle”. Life moves fast. But I must say - I age gracefully (and maybe even glamorously). And this is a fact, not self consolation!

Ahem!