On being antique

I got a good laugh out of a column by a local writer in our newspaper yesterday.

(Note: I’m probably not much younger than the mom who wrote the column, though my kids are not yet in their teens. I can relate to what she’s saying.)

Anita Lynn Brown spoke of the approach of the “golden years:”

My daughter was talking about her day in high school the other day and happened to mention the fact that she thought the desks in many of her classrooms must be ‘‘antiques.’’ Noting that she seemed dead serious, I asked the dreaded question, ‘‘Why?’’

‘‘Because there were the words ‘John Lennon RIP’ scratched on one of them.’’ I rebutted with another long question, ‘‘So?’’ ‘‘Well, John Lennon is really old and has been dead forever so the kid that wrote that must have been a student there a hundred years ago.’’

Her words hung in the air like lead. John Lennon? Old? I can vividly remember watching Monday Night Football with my brother...when Howard Cosell (another mastodon) said he was shot in New York City. It was 1980, 26 years ago. My daughter wasn’t even in my horoscope yet.

It’s hard to imagine, but to a 17 year-old, John Lennon is an antique. I’m not sure why this makes me feel more golden than green but one thing is certain — time is going way too fast.

When Paul McCartney took the stage at Super Bowl XXXIX last year, my daughter said, ‘‘I know it’s Super Bowl 39, but why do we have to listen to 39-year-old music?’’ A good point, but to me, it seemed thrilling to see the old boy still rocking and rolling. He no longer has to fake the question, ‘‘Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?’’ He is 64. In my daughter’s eyes, he was just old. I can still remember the poster of Sir Paul hanging in my bedroom, how long ago was that? Let’s not think about it. Can you hear those bones creaking again?

It was even worse when Mick Jagger and the Stones sang ‘‘Satisfaction’’ at this year’s Super Bowl. My son said, ‘‘This guy’s like a hundred and he’s singing a Britney Spears song!’’ The generation gap is looking more like the Grand Canyon everyday.

(Yeah, I saw Jagger too, for the whole 10 seconds I could stand it; I thought he looked and sounded every bit as grotesque as he did when I was a teenager!)

It’s hard to imagine pop artist Britney Spears singing at Super Bowl 85 dropping her dentures for the fifth time and singing, ‘‘Oops, I Did it Again,’’ but someday it’ll happen.

(LOL!)

I hope that my grandchildren will be there to say, ‘‘Wow, is she like a hundred?’’

My family owns a ‘73 Saab 96. It’s a fun little “vintage” car and people often comment on it. The other day I overheard my younger son telling someone, “yeah, it’s like from 1920 or something; it’s really, really old!” I decided this was a homeschool mathematics “teachable moment” and asked him, afterward, to figure out just how old the car is. When he got the answer, he stood there for a moment, then his eyes opened wide and he said, “Mom...you’re older!! I then rubbed in the lemon juice and said, “OK, how old was I when this car was made?” When he realized I was almost as old then as his older brother is now, his eyes got even wider.

But then, bless him, he said, “Well, Mom, you’re kind of old, but not really old.”

*sigh* That’s my boy.