...Living in a non-English speaking country, and I began to be referred to more as "madam", and less as "girl" (which is not offensive, it is simply the way that both women and men are addressed in said country). In the Untied Suits of Amrica, the less I get carded for purchasing alcohol, the older I feel. I think that all young people should card us old people, just to make us feel good.

When the responding officers looked like they should not be out so late on a school night.

1. When the barista at Starbucks addressed me as "sir."

2. When some kids at a water park remarked to each other, "Man, for a guy in his 40's that dude sure was hyper!"

3. When someone on my improv team a few years back grudgingly admitted that "I was pretty hip for a guy in my 30's."

Pretty much whenever a part of your personality gets compared to an age bracket - which happens more and more these days.

Oh, one more: I can no longer read CD jewel case labels without doing that over the top, then under the frame of your glasses before what's written on them clarifies itself.

When I herniated a disc, and I'm reminded of it everyday when I have old lady back pain.

I'm not old. I'm not! I'm not! I'm not!

whadja say? Whattt?

I don't know I'm old, so I can't answer this.

When I was watching a march madness basketball game from Madison Square Garden and thinking, I hadn't been to the Garden since I saw The Police there in 1981 and then realizing that none of the ballplayers had been born in 1981.

Oh and LT, if you got bifocals you wouldn't have to do that under your glasses look.

not that I'd know anything about bifocals, nope

I guess when I got up to 7 pills a day for basic maintenance. I actually had to get one of those pill boxes that "old people" use.

I later got in better shape and lost the pills, then slipped a bit and had to start taking blood pressure medicine again, but I think I could probably get off it now if I needed to, since I started riding my bicycle.

IKIWOW: my son turned 40.

[[ my son turned 40 ]]

When I called my mother two weeks ago, I explained that my phlegmy cough was just the annual bout of bronchitis. "You need to take care of yourself," Mom said. "You know you're no spring chicken."

Hee, Obscure Reference wins, I think.

Earlier today, I was talking with my dad about the health of one of his sisters and I asked how old she was. He comes back with "Um...ah, 60?" I pointed out that couldn't possibly be right because that sister's daughter is 51 and he sheepishly admitted he was trying to do the math based upon his own age of 39.

I refrained from reminding him that I'm 47.

My mother has picked up the running joke her father used to use. When she calls any of her children to wish them a happy birthday, she'll ask "Now, how old are you?", and as all of us are in our 40's and 50's, when we answer, she'll say "Well, what in hell does that make me?"

Damn old.

When I made those damn kids get off my lawn.

Recently: not finding Facebook or Twitter worth the trouble.

I get reminded daily that I need to get my eyes checked as I hold the book farther and farther from my face.

Sigh. It didn't start happening until I'd just turned 40 and then my Mom told me that's just how it is when you get older. Thanks Mom. That's when I started reminding her on my birthday every year how old she is too. ;)

(Thank you for reminding me again, LT and readery.)

In the last couple years or so I've been looking at kids in their teens and twenties and thinking man, youth really is wasted on the young.

The thing is, though, I'm sure twenty years hence I'll be looking at people my age (late thirties) and thinking the same thing.

It struck me as funny recently. Somehow, I'd managed to get married, own a house, have two kids, have a sort-of "career" type job, and yet none of those things really made me feel grown up.

But, the dissolution of my marriage, and having to contend with buying a new house, and sharing custody of my girls? Holy fuck, did that feel like grown up business.

Mind you, now that I'm beginning to find my feet and live this new life, I'm in no hurry to ACT grown up or anything. Even if I DID cut my hair.

Don't you dare cut those perfect curls.

At the metafilter meetup dinner party I went to two weeks ago. Everyone there was about the same age as my daughter - mid twenties. We were on the back porch smoking a . . cigarettes. . and they were talking about growing up with video games that I remembered my kids playing. I said something like, "well, I am a little older than y'all." And there was dead silence and one girl looked at me and said, "Just how old ARE you?"

I would like to believe they were shocked to find out I was 46.

Honey, come have a meetup with me. I'm older than you, babybaby, and will depend on you to act shocked when you find out how much older. Deal? Plus, we can smoke a ... cigarettes, and I can tell you about when I lived in Brevard.

I sure wish I was smoking a ... cigarettes with you lovely ladies right now.

word.

Yeah, mgl and taz, let's have an over-45s meetup. I look around at meetups sometimes and realise I'm the oldest by far, sometimes by 30 years!

When pregnant women started to look almost universally younger than me. Now I often shift to "oh how beautiful" thoughts when I see a pregnant woman. Before? "Oh, that poor, poor thing."

Mgl you are ageless and don't let anyone tell you different!

I went prematurely gray (starting in high school). For most of my thirties, I've had a full head of gray hair. It used to be that, when I turned around or someone approached me from a distance, I would see a look of surprise break over strangers' faces as they contrasted my youthful face with the gray hair.

I recently noticed that that, uh, doesn't happen anymore.

So that would be when I started to feel old: this summer, when I realized that my face now matches my hair. Oy.

3. When someone on my improv team a few years back grudgingly admitted that "I was pretty hip for a guy in my 30's."

Ha! I get this a lot on campus; one traditional-age student introduced me to another as "An old student who's cool!"

Uh. Thanks.

When I first noticed baristas grooving to the Beatles and realizing that they were not even fucking BORN when that music came out, and I was in high school.

This morning at volleyball, one of the guys has a birthday. I ask how old he is, and he says, "too old to say." I reply, "I'm 59, you can tell me how frigging old YOU are!" 44. Yeah, poor guy.

Seriously? My face and body aren't as good as they used to be, re beauty, and that takes some adjustment (though not that much, because it took me quite a long time to even figure out that I was sort of lovely). Healthwise, I'm actually feeling better than when I was young and used to have constant migraines, and awful, paralyzing back problems. I think the migraines were hormonal and stress-related, and the back problems were stress.

I used to have nasty aching pains in my knee that seemed like arthritis or something - that completely disappeared as I got older. Until a couple of years ago (for at least five or six years)I had this weird, strong, painful, constricting pain at the lowest part of my leg, at the back of my ankle, just above the heel, almost every morning when I woke up. I would limp out of bed every morning until it loosened up, for years. Now? completely gone, inexplicably. (same amount of exercise in the same fashion, as far as I can tell)

For whatever weird reason, I feel better than I did when I was younger - 30s and 40s, I'm talking. The worse thing for my self-esteem is weight gain. I was never a sylph, so I don't think my expectations for my older-age self are unreasonable... I'm perfectly willing to accept gray hair, wrinkles, loss of tone... but can't I please just remain not-fashionably-thin, like I've always been? Instead of resolutely plump?

But, my head is good. And I feel good. And now is the time, as they say for everyone, that you have to rely on what you are on the inside, instead of just how you look on the outside. I'm okay with that. In fact... except for a really short period in my life (when I finally kinda recognized that I was also sorta purty), that's how I was always doing it.

As for intelligence... well hah! That's where I'm a Viking. I totally have my 20- 30- and 40-year-old self beat! Hah!!! yngr s3lvz = tly rwnd!!!1!

I knew I was old (45) when.....

I caught my friends and I talking about how our bodies were falling apart and what meds we were taking....

My nephew didn't know who Michael Jackson or the Beatles were....

I had to jump to the box on the checklist that said 45-50 years old....

My parents turned 80 this year...

I'm the only cigarette smoker I know.... (everyone else must be secret smoker)

Taz, normally, I'd echo your sentiments, and I expect I'll be doing so with vigor soon...

... but for the moment, I'm in a valley, not a hill: my back (admittedly, a condition of traumatic injury, not of age) is keeping me immobile a lot of the time; when I'm on my feet, I'm limping; I'm sore and slow and tired much of the time. Also, at a Halloween party, someone asked if I was costumed as a grandmother. That stung.

For the moment, I feel old, a lot older than my forty years, and though for me, aging has had many, many positive effects, they aren't what I'm feeling at the moment. I'm allowing myself to recognize that feeling right now, and to figure out how to re-invigorate myself.

But I like where you are, taz. Where you are is lovely! I used to live there. I'll meet you back there, and soon, I hope.

I knew I was old when what I did at school became what I did at recess. I was wrong.

I knew I was old when the music I played wasn't in a book anymore. I was wrong about that, too.

I knew I was old the first time I took the stage, the first time I walked the stage, the first time I ceded the stage. Wrong again.

I knew I was old when I said goodbye to everything I knew and hello to everything I didn't. Nope.

I knew I was old the first time I lost everything, the first time I quit everything, the first time I gave away everything. Not even close.

I knew I was old the first time it hurt just to be alive. I was wrong.

I knew I was old when I stopped working, when I stopped believing, and when I stopped trying. Wrong.

I knew I was old when my shoulder couldn't take it, when my knees couldn't make it, when my guts couldn't fake it anymore. All wrong.

I knew I was old when I held my father's hand and wept on my mother's shroud. Even then I was wrong.

I knew I was old when I stopped crying. I was wrong then, too.

I knew I was old when I started caring about tomorrow.

I hope I'm wrong forever.

- When my reference to Pink Floyd was met with a blank stare from my much younger coworker
- When 25 year olds started looking like high school kids
- When I got my defibrillator

Physically, I felt old after being diagnosed with arthritis as a teenager, and came to look on my body (no matter how it looked to others) primarily as a painful, degenerating thing.

Mentally, I don't yet feel old because in many ways I know I'm years behind most of those who were born at the same time as me. A feeling of being stuck in the awkward useless phase perpetually. When I was very young, I couldn't wait to be thirty-five or forty, and expected that by that time I would be confident and sophisticated and greying glamorously, far along in my career and somehow managing to raise a loving family. Someday I'll lose my naïveté.

When I realized my overhanging belly had killed the grass on the top part of my lawn. (Yes, euphemism.)

I can also hold a towel up with my boobs.