How Many Dog Years Is Forty-Eight?

I write a lot about being “old” in this blog. I’m forty-eight, which is just a little over the hill of middle-age, and I’m okay with that. As The Husband Dude says, any day above ground is a good day.

I will admit, though, that I generally live in a comfortable existence of semi-denial about just how old I actually am. I mean, for the most part, I’m in good health and I don’t feel old. I still work out and I am fortunate not to have a lot of aches and pains. I’ve taken good care of my skin, so I think I look pretty decent for my age.

It doesn’t help either that for my entire youth, I was always the youngest. I’m the youngest grandchild/cousin on both sides of the family. And by youngest, I mean the next oldest (other than my own brother) was ten years older than me, so I really was the baby. With an August birthday, I was usually one of the youngest in my class at school. I’m the youngest sister-in-law on THD’s side of the family. In fact, I’m the same age as his oldest nephew. Every place I ever worked, it seemed I was always the youngest, or one of the youngest.

The tide started turning in my late thirties.

We got a new young straight-out-of-college girl on our team at work. As I got to know her, I started doing the math and realized she would’ve been in the fourth grade the first year I was teaching fourth grade.

Slowly, the older generations in my family passed away. By the time I was forty, my generation of cousins were the patriarchs and matriarchs of my family.

My two bonus kids started growing up, getting married and having kids of their own. I became a grandma, but I could still delude myself into not realizing how old I was because I still had a preteen at home at that time.

It wasn’t until I left Satan’s Butthole that the full extent of my age hit me. When I started working at Not Satan’s Butthole, I realized I was surrounded by people who were born the same year I graduated high school, or even…gasp…the year I graduated college.

** SPOILER ALERT ** You know you’re the old lady of your coworkers when you can use your “Mom Voice” to intimidate them and you can bribe them into doing your bidding by offering to buy them a Frosty at Wendy’s.

I. Am. Not. Joking.

My supervisors started getting younger and younger too. When you end up working for someone who was squishing zits in middle school the year you actually started the job they are supervising you in, that’s when you know you’ve gotten old.

There are also some subtle signs that I am slowly moving into “The Golden Years”. Here in the south, where people are raised to address their elders in a certain manner, you can rest assured you’ve crossed that age line when you go from being referred to as “miss” to being referred to as “ma’am”. You also know you’ve crossed that line when hot, young guys no longer open the door for you and smile because they’re interested, but rather because you remind them of their mom.

It feels kind of like the first time you buy liquor and they don’t card you.

Damn it.

Oh well. I’m learning to embrace my age and use it to my advantage (** see Frosty bribes above **). Also, it turns out I’m not really the oldest employee at this new company. That honor goes to Sarge, who is ninety-one years old!

In dog years.

Meet Sarge.

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring.