In Touch/Out of Touch

Well, it's official.

I can't be trusted anymore.

That's because today I have officially crossed the threshold of being-30, a.k.a. out of the realm where I can reasonably claim to be "too young" to understand things (let's be honest; there's something about that 3 at the front of the decade that makes one seem irrevocably adult, at least as far as expectations go).

I was hoping that the trade-off would be that I woke up magically comprehending escrow, but that part still hasn't kicked in. Maybe that's a turning-40 thing.

Honestly, I'm not particularly freaked out about the number--I'm hoping they'll learn to do things with Botox within 10 years that will keep me from ever REALLY aging meaningfully--but there is a concern tied to my biological clock that goes beyond vanity, or even the possible (though not plausible) compulsive desire to eventually breed:

The older I get, the more out of touch I am.

How I imagine teens now see me.


This wouldn't be that big a deal if I were just a person who, like all other reasonable people, hoped not to have to encounter large crowds of teens in public spaces, where they're likely to annoy me.

But unfortunately, I'm a person whose career, at least in part, depends on accurately depicting the lives of teens--what they do, how they think, how much of their under-butt they apparently now feel comfortable just totally showing in public, what's the deal with that, jeez--and that means I have to maintain at least SOME sense of "the youth culture."

I've now entered that weird age range where I'm not old enough to be hilariously cool for an old, but too old for a teenager to imagine living to be my horrific, decrepit age.

Probably that won't have any effect on my ability to mentally never-progress-past-high-school. I'm hoping that's the case.

Because if it isn't--if turning 30 has magically flipped a switch where I no longer "get" what it feels like to be the people I'm writing about--then someone needs to start explaining escrow to me.