captainsblog | New Old Things

Throughout my life, I've occasionally measured my place in the world, at least in terms of age, by noticing who I'm older than. The first such observation, probably, was when my same-age friend Dawn's younger brother Frankie took over the paper route that brought Newsday to our home each day. (Eventually, I confused the timeline by taking over the route from him.) Next, cashiers at the Hardees closest to our high school started turning into the younger siblings of the kids I'd recognized there from my class or the ones ahead of us. In time, through college and law school, I met, and occasionally replaced or was replaced by, editors and TA's and other co-workers, even a few faculty, who were my age or younger. (A hotshot law professor from my third year, who I never had for any classes, wound up marrying a student in the class behind me; decades later, their kid wound up in Emily's high school graduating class. Awkwarrrrrd.)

Things got more pronounced in the working world. When I started practicing law, it was common for the kids of the clients to be close to my age. Nowadays, the clients' kids are usually younger than ours is. By the turn of this century, it wasn't unusual for me to be appearing before judges of my age or younger; now, it's increasingly rare that they're not, and the my-age people are becoming veterans of appellate courts. After the 2006 election, I became (however briefly) older than the governor of my own state; two years later, I beat out the new President by almost a year. In any random peer group (such as the other night, when my trainer introduced me to two new students I'll be working with on Fridays), it's more likely than not that I'll be the oldest by at least a few years.

All of this, though, is to observe, not to complain. You remain welcome on my damn lawn. It came to mind today, after church, when Eleanor and I made a relatively rare-for-us joint grocery run to the Wegmans she works at. As we were cashing out, we both noticed one of our favorite front-end co-ordinators (mine, too, from the stories Eleanor tells about her plus my observing Amy myself on the job) was training a fresh-faced trio of n00bs. We both smiled and Eleanor said what I was already thinking about how sweet they looked. Later, I realized that I knew one of them- a girl from church, at least two years younger than Em, who'd been in the last confirmation class I mentored going on three years ago.

Maybe you should get off that lawn.

----

Nevertheless, I please myself that I'm not turning into the black-sock-and-sandaled Old Man of the Neighborhood. I'm keeping up with those younger whippersnappers in my fitness routine- not yet setting the world on fire, but at least learning how to rub the sticks together to get something of a spark going. I still enjoy the company of twenty- and thirty-somethings, here and elsewhere, and still share songs, and stories, and values with them far more than my parents ever did with me or my friends when they were in their fifties. And I'm even coming around to appreciations of things more akin to my parents' generation than they are to those of you younguns.

For the better part of two hours just now, I was in absolute rapture listening to big band music out in our greenhouse- before, during and after the yummy dinner Eleanor put forth out there. I don't associate that music with my parents, or with really much of anything; they'd probably listened to it long before my time, but they'd devolved into some pretty horrific elevator music by the time I came along. Even so, I didn't have good associations with that kind of music, either. Now, though, those songs connect to this time, and this place- to Sunday evenings in our home, which we have kept, as our wedding vows promised, as "a haven of blessing and a place of peace." I may not know the songs, but hearing Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Gene Krupa on the same track is enough for even me to appreciate as something special.

It's good to know I can still be taught new trickage, even when the things in question are even older than I am.