Okay, full disclosure: I am not an old person. Well, at least not according to me. My students will tell you that I am the oldest person they know. (Teenagers think everyone older than 20 is ancient.) I do, however, have a few old person tendencies and these have only been enhanced by my status as a new parent.

Since I went back to work, I have been doing more “old-personing” than usual. “Old-personing” is a slippery slope, you see. It starts with an afternoon nap and suddenly you’re up at 5 am counting the hours until you can watch Jeopardy and go to bed. This, my friends, is “old-personing.” Are you guilty of this too?

Here are the ways I “old-personed” this week:

I went to bed at 8:30.

It was great. Really great actually. I have no regrets about going to bed early.

However, every time I want to go to bed early, my husband looks at the clock meaningfully and says, “You’re going to bed already??”. Like there are some sort of adult bedtime police, just waiting to jump out from behind a plant and take me away for going to bed at a lame time.

Okay, this is super lame, but I don’t care. I think that the best part about being an adult is that you get to set your own bedtime. If I happen to choose an early bedtime, so be it.

I told a bunch of teenagers to put their phones away and lectured them about respect.

Okay, this is a big part of my job. At any given time, I see about 10 kids on a phone in class. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who you know is not really listening because they are on their phone. But you go ahead with it anyway, on the off-chance that they might be listening. Then after you say everything you meant to say, they put down their phone and ask you to explain everything again because they weren’t really listening. Now imagine this happens to you 100 times a day. It is exactly as frustrating as it sounds. So, I lectured a bunch of teenagers and I have no regrets.

I told a story beginning with, “When I was your age…”

This was at work too. I talked about my first job. I’ll spare you, but as I was saying it, I kept thinking – damn I’m old. For sure at least one of my students agreed.

I ate dinner at 5. (And honestly, I felt like it was a bit late.)

When you eat breakfast before 7 and lunch before noon, you are starving at 5. In a perfect world I would eat dinner then. The problem is that my husband is not home at that time. Also, we are not 75 years old. So, I wait an hour and eat like a normal person.

Sometimes I get invited to go out places at night. (Not often since the baby, but it happens.) When this involves waiting to eat dinner until 7:30 or 8 I have to eat a pre-dinner to keep me from scarfing my food like a labrador retriever the minute it touches the table. I really get why old people eat at 5 pm. Honestly, I think they are on to something there.

I asked someone to explain technology to me. I only kind of got it.

My husband is the tech guy at our house. I am fairly competent at technology, but when something goes wrong my first response is to throw the device and swear. Turns out this is not very helpful. So I am making a real effort to start to understand my tech problems and troubleshoot, rather than throw my technology. So this time, I asked for an explanation. Half way through I zoned out. I don’t think they noticed.

I said, “Oh, my back!”. Also, I cracked a little when I stood up all week.

This probably had something to do with my ribs being dislocated. They do this often – just pop out. I have a good chiropractor,  so it is fine. I did walk around the house groaning every time I got out of a chair. If we had a walker, I would have been all over it.

Said, “Oh fiddlesticks!” when I hit my arm off something instead of my usual favourite “f-word”. (This may be a new parent thing.)

I’m trying out new pseudo-swear words that are more kid friendly. I live in fear of my son repeating some swear word I said while we are out in public. It’s probably only a matter of time, but I am trying to postpone it for as long as I can.

So I have tried a lot of new pseudo-swears recently: sugar, flip, flapjacks and fiddlesticks. They all suck. I am open to suggestions.

I didn’t want to start watching a TV show at 9 pm because I couldn’t commit to being awake for the whole thing.

This is a serious dilemma for me most nights. Do I start an hour long show at 9 pm? What if I can’t stay awake for the end? Should I just PVR it? Should I choose a half hour show instead? My life is tough. You don’t want my problems at 9 pm.

 

Am I the only one “old-personing”? Please tell me I am not alone! How do you “old-person”?