Getting old(er) is a strange experience. Apart from the obvious ravages of time, which some of us fight with both (artificial) tooth and nail, and the rest of us accept with grumpy ill grace, there are also the tricks that the passage of time can play on us. For instance I have noticed that increasingly I am seeing in younger peoples faces, echo's of my youthful friends and family.
On the train I recently almost said hello to a girl, who bore a remarkable resemblance to a young girl of my youth. Of course this was entirely superficial and unlike Mr John Titor, I had not in fact travelled back in to my own past.
However it took a conscious double take to recall that her appearance was like that girl had looked thirty years ago. This has happened a couple of times in the past year or so, and I guess it just proves that there are only so many facial models nature can employ before repeating from an older template.
I can see why people with Alzheimer's or Senile Dementia can get so quickly confused if they just lose that ability to recall where they are in time. Incidentally, finally some great news on the Alzheimer's front ... a drug (LMTX), that stops and even reverses the illness.
Anyways .... as I was saying, travelling through time in one direction is generally a real pain. However one advantage, especially with a younger generation who seem to have been taught little at school, is that jokes and expressions that seem ancient to me, can be reused, like fine old wines, rather than mere vintage chuckles.
I recently worked with a man in his late twenties who literally would laugh out loud, at expressions that he had never heard before. At first I thought he was doing so in a mocking way, but later heard him report one to a mate of his on the phone, and realised that he genuinely hadn't heard it or the others before.
What that says about the younger generation and the education they get now, it is hard to say, although I will remark that white males are now the worst performing group in the English educational system. Still not my problem, so I enjoy the celebrity of being thought occasionally 'witty', simply by reusing funny expressions from my own earlier life.
Still its a truism to say that its only with people of our own age that most of us feel comfortable - much of this is that we share a cultural understanding, but the downside of this fact is that as we travel along times path, people of our own generation fall way ... and like the centenarian (I was going to write 'centurion', which sounds better, if wrong), I met 30 years ago, we are left alone drifting in a sea of time, on which we can recognise none of the shores and spot no safe landfalls.
So generally its all down hill. For instance I have now lost the thread of where I was going with this post so ...............
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| The Past Sometimes Looks Sunnier Than The Future As We Get Older |
On the train I recently almost said hello to a girl, who bore a remarkable resemblance to a young girl of my youth. Of course this was entirely superficial and unlike Mr John Titor, I had not in fact travelled back in to my own past.
However it took a conscious double take to recall that her appearance was like that girl had looked thirty years ago. This has happened a couple of times in the past year or so, and I guess it just proves that there are only so many facial models nature can employ before repeating from an older template.
I can see why people with Alzheimer's or Senile Dementia can get so quickly confused if they just lose that ability to recall where they are in time. Incidentally, finally some great news on the Alzheimer's front ... a drug (LMTX), that stops and even reverses the illness.
Anyways .... as I was saying, travelling through time in one direction is generally a real pain. However one advantage, especially with a younger generation who seem to have been taught little at school, is that jokes and expressions that seem ancient to me, can be reused, like fine old wines, rather than mere vintage chuckles.
I recently worked with a man in his late twenties who literally would laugh out loud, at expressions that he had never heard before. At first I thought he was doing so in a mocking way, but later heard him report one to a mate of his on the phone, and realised that he genuinely hadn't heard it or the others before.
What that says about the younger generation and the education they get now, it is hard to say, although I will remark that white males are now the worst performing group in the English educational system. Still not my problem, so I enjoy the celebrity of being thought occasionally 'witty', simply by reusing funny expressions from my own earlier life.
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| There's A Reason Why Old Soldiers Enjoy The Company Of Their Contemporaries |
Still its a truism to say that its only with people of our own age that most of us feel comfortable - much of this is that we share a cultural understanding, but the downside of this fact is that as we travel along times path, people of our own generation fall way ... and like the centenarian (I was going to write 'centurion', which sounds better, if wrong), I met 30 years ago, we are left alone drifting in a sea of time, on which we can recognise none of the shores and spot no safe landfalls.
So generally its all down hill. For instance I have now lost the thread of where I was going with this post so ...............
Very astute observation on time and age if I may say so.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment ... It comes to us all and I'm in the foothills now!!
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