Maybe Getting Old Isn't Better Than The Alternative

I was bouncing around the interweb today, and I saw this Sports Illustrated cover that made me feel really old. It’s came out twenty years ago today, which is why it popped up on the S.I. website. I remember this cover because my buddy was infatuated with Kathy Ireland, and he called me when his copy arrived. He was really happy that she made the cover – like he got a bonus for it or something. At the time Ms. Ireland, along with Elle MacPherson and Rachel Hunter, was tops in pound for pound hotness amongst American males between the ages of ten and twenty-five. That ten year old is thirty and that twenty-five year old is starting to think about retirement. Or at least he was until last October. Thanks to Facebook I can see the faces of the people, and even some pictures of the events that were going on in my life at that time. I remember acting like a fool every single weekend at another buddy’s house, which had been left to him when his parents moved to North Carolina. I remember the layout of the house. I remember the island in the kitchen. I remember the dead yard. I saw the magazine cover in the bottom corner of my screen this afternoon and I was the jackass kid with a high top fade and the worst attitude in the history of bad attitudes. What’s funny is that MJ was there. What’s not funny is that when I looked into the mirror I was surprised at what I saw. I spent the afternoon looking through the eyes of eighteen year old me. I had no use for the thirty-eight year old me. I hit rock bottom when I searched for a current picture of Kathy - yes we’re on a first name basis now – and she’s stunning, but she’s not the flawless siren she was when she was twenty-five. Back then I would have clubbed baby seals with other baby seals just to see her in real life. Now I imagine trying to have a conversation with a twenty-five year old supermodel, and I wonder if the beer I would be pounding would make her more or less annoying. If that change of perspective is what happens with age, I think I may have had enough.