Growing old gracefully

Will there ever come a day when I'm happy and content with getting old? Doubtful.

It's funny, growing up all I wanted was to be older. I wanted my body to fit into the 17 or 18 year old mind that I was adamant I possessed. I was the oldest 12 year old you ever met. Now that I'm early-30s I want to be 18 again. I think deep down, everyone does.

An age of innocence, experiementation and no responsibilities. All you had to do was pass exams and make enough pocket money at McDonald's to afford your CDs and concert tickets.

Even though I'm not comfortable being almost double my ideal age, I am happy that I'm a child of the 70s. I was young enough that I didn't need to deal with the whole flares situation or brown and orange furniture (and they say the 80s is the decade that taste forgot??), yet I was old enough to live through the 80s pretty aware of what was going on around me.

I think the 80s were the last innocent decade before big business got their claws into everything and financially proving yourself was the buzzword... whether it be in music, movies, work, life, etc. The rot probably set in in the late 80s as the me-decade overspilled into the corporate UPC barcode decade.

So, while I envy the 18 year olds for all the things I used to have, I don't envy them the era they're 18, and I can only see it getting worse for the next generation. At least the current crop will be able to remember a time before "the threat of terror", similar to my generation and the "time before AIDS".