Getting Old

There is a time in everybody's life when they finaly realise they are mortal and will one day probably kick the bucket. This time usually happens sometime in your twenties so I have been told but I have no reason to worry about it because I'm going to live forever. Growing old is something that can be taken easily, knowing that it's slowly approaching but you will have plenty of time to get used to the fact. Old is somewhere you'll eventually be. Growing old is a calm thing.

Getting old is a bloody terrorifying thing. Getting old hits you in the face so fast that you have to turn around and ask in a dazed voice "What?".

Last week I went to the friendly local opticians to have my eyes tested. Long story short it turns out that my eyes, health speaking, are excellent apart from a couple of anomylies I've had from birth. The only problem is that the muscles which pull the eyes together for depth perseption tend to get a little lazy when they've been working for long periods of time. So now I am wearing glasses with prisms in that will correct this. When I asked the optician how long would I have to wear them for he said "Well at your age I'd have to say the muscles won't recover now", or, for the vast for seeable future. The only time I have had "at your age" is when the adults are keeping secrets from me that I should rightly know about. "at your age", meaning you're past it, hit me in the face so fast I had to turn around and ask in a dazed voice "What?"

When I was filling in the form for my now dormant drivers licence there was a box on the form asking whether I would like to donate my organs in the event of me crashing the car. After having recovered from the obvious faith the DVLA has in teenage drivers, I started to worry about this box, and being British didn't help. Do I tick 'no' and make sure I take whatever they can scrape off the road to my grave? Or do I tick 'yes' and do one last good deed? The prospect of somebody recycling me when I'm finished in this world really scared me. I didn't have to make these kind of decisions when I was five. In the end I ticked yes, vowing to buy a car with twice as many air bags than cup holders and went back to playing with my lego.

As you may have heard, this thing called Christmas is coming around. Twelve short years ago I would bearly be able to sleep, partly from being nervous performing in the school christmas play, but the greater contributing factor would be a knot the size of my head in my stomach made of excitment of christmas being just around the corner. On the day itself I would be wide awake in a fraction of a pico second and run into my parents bedroom to help my sister drag my parents out of bed. This christmas we've decided that we'll open our presents in the afternoon (excuse me if I'm missing the bigger picture of what Christmas is all about), and I'm not particually bothered by this as I can have a lie in in the morning.

I will soon be into my second decade and have to start making my own way in the world. University. Bills. Rent/mortage. DIY. Taxes (the Inland Revenue has already been snooping in my jobless bank acount). Money. Kids, in nine years and seven months I will be the same age as my parents were when they had me, and I haven't even got a girl friend yet. It's all there waiting and I don't know anything about it.

I've had about a fifth of my life already and I don't feel I've aged at all. I always thought that when I became a teenager I'd feel different. When that didn't work I thought I would feel older in a couple of years. A couple of years later and here I am. Getting older is such a gradual thing that you only noticed it has happened when you look back at where you were.

I miss my lego.


Writing this article has brought forth a premature midlife crisis, so I'm off to buy a Ferrari and try to pick up twenty year old girls.

Nitey nite.