Senior Moments

When my mother and her contemporaries discuss senior moments, they are usually referring to incidents when they forget where their eldest son lives, or moments when they can't remember their grandchildren's names. This lady I work with, she's constantly having senior moments.

"Er, I can't remember why I came in here. Do you know.... what'syournameagain... oh, SD!"

Each time this happens, I smile smugly to myself and feel happy that I've got a good thirty years or so before these things happen to me. Turns out, I had a senior moment of my own yesterday.

I was at a friend's house, and her younger sister had a bunch of friends over. I always thought of myself as a really fun and friendly kid. Age gaps never really bothered me much, as I shmooze with my older sister's friends and my younger sister's friends as if they're all my age.

So I sat down to shmooze with them. One of the girls is a teacher, and they were working on something for her class. As we talked, I offered my help. Miss Teacher, whom, I might mention, was a frighteningly perfect specimen of a person, gladly gave me a chore.

I sat there cutting and sorting and mostly listening to these girls. Suddenly, as they giggled about something not-all-that-funny, I realized that you don't have to be fifty to have a senior moment.

As I looked at these girls acting so little, I felt so old.

And then I realized... I am old - to them! These girls are recent high school graduates. I might feel like we're "basically" the same age, but as hard as I try to pretend, I'm getting older, and these girls are quite a number of years my junior...


Excuse me, I must go soak my dentures...