Tiki Tom
My Mail is Forwarded Here
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- Oahu, North Polynesia
You know you are getting old when you read the headlines and think "glad I'm not young anymore!"
You know you are getting old when you read the headlines and think "glad I'm not young anymore!"
I feel this way, way too often. We are on a not-good trajectory and I hope the good stuff can hold together for another few decades, but I doubt that will happen. But yes, it is odd to be happy you aren't younger.
I don't think there is much odd about it at all. Most people I know don't want to go back, knowing what they know now.
That wouldn't work, because the 50 year old mind couldn't remember what to do with the 20 year old body.
That wouldn't work, because the 50 year old mind couldn't remember what to do with the 20 year old body.
In so many ways my life began at 20. Graduated from community college and was finally able to go off to university on my own terms. If I had been able to call the shots I would have liked to have been sent to a boarding school or even a military school when I was as young as eight. It was a less than ideal home life, and I always knew that I could do better fending for myself. Perhaps most kids believe that they possess more common sense than their parents, but I believed that mine was a truly objective assessment.
All that aside, those last two undergraduate years were among the happiest and most carefree of my life (Prior to retirement, of course.). Perhaps because I had to pay for it, I didn't take my studies for granted, or presume them as a matter of right. But when one's sole focus of responsibility is keeping up a GPA, life is still pretty simple and carefree no matter who is paying the bills. And not having to deal with the constant parental warfare was, well, blissful in its own sense.
My teen years were fine. But being the son of not-very-wealthy immigrants, I was shown the door at 18. Four years in the army followed. Then, between the GI bill and a string of bottom of the barrel jobs, I somehow got myself a Bachelors degree and, eventually, a masters degree. In short, my 20s were about working full time and going to school almost full time. I invariably worked washing dishes or bussing tables or retail sales Thursdays through Sundays. You name the job, I probably did it at one time or another. Couldn’t get a date to save my life, but that one day changed when I suddenly got an entry level job with a bright outlook at a prestigious place of employment. I remember how surprised I was when I found out the job had health insurance AND a week of paid vacation per year! But by then I was thirty. I would not go back to my twenties for anything.
The above may also explain why, now, I am spoiling my two college-aged daughters ROTTEN. I sometimes say that, in my next life, I want to come back as MY kids.
I am not so sure about that.....kind a like ridin' a bike I think.That wouldn't work, because the 50 year old mind couldn't remember what to do with the 20 year old body.
The other side of that coin; in his indulgence to make himself feel good he is depriving his daughters of the experience (and character building) of doing it themselves.A very good friend of mine had a somewhat similar experience, not shown the door at all, but had to start supporting his widowed mom in his late teens, worked a bunch of jobs, got through college eventually, etc. He absolutely spoils his daughters (not in the traditional way the term is used - they are very nice, polite, hard working, young women) as he wanted them to have fun at college and not worry about money or working.
Our two jokes are that we both want to come back in our next life as his kids and that we both want to have an account at the Bank of Bill (his name) as his daughters bank there - you never have to make a deposit, the bank pays all your bills and always covers your checks and if you run short of funds, the bank always gives you more. He's (obviously) done very well for himself and it makes him incredibly happy to do this for his kids.