I’m a burnt out old man
So it’s been my theory for several years that the age of twenty-two is officially old. There’s lots of birthdays people look forward to. Ten, thirteen, fourteen (at least back in the day in Idaho), fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen (go Canada), twenty, twenty-one: all good years. But after the age of twenty-one, there’s no more birthdays to joyfully anticipate. Except twenty-five. And lower insurance premiums is a really old person thing to look forward to.
So there it is. Twenty-three. Old. I once explained my rationale to my grandmother, who didn’t seem pleased. “If you’re old, then what am I?” After I explained that, in my view, she was in the same demographic as a twenty-three year old, she seemed to cheer up a bit.
But what brought this on? I’ve been old for a while now.
It all came back to mind after learning two surprising facts in quick succession. The first: one of the head developers for WordPress is only twenty-one. The second: the guy who helped me out with some DNS issues with this site the other day is in High School. He helps run a large DNS server, everydns.net, and he’s in High School.
What did I do in High School? Watched a bunch of movies, mostly. Most of them were even pretty good. But anything useful? Let’s see… nope. Just a typical, burden to society, teenager. I don’t feel jealous or put out; I’m just impressed. More power to them. Plus, it gives me a little confidence that the world really isn’t going to pot. There are people out there (of every age) who are capable of both doing things and getting things done.
While it’s nice to know these people exist. I suppose time will tell if I ever reach an age where I’m one of them.
