When you’re young, people warn you about the big stuff. Taxes. Mortgages. Grey hair. What they don’t mention is that one day you’ll stand in your kitchen, aged thirty-something, and say “ooh, that’s a good bin”, and mean it, and that will be the high point of your week.
I’ve been getting older for a while now. I’ve barely missed a day. Nobody has. That’s the problem.
Your Body Develops Opinions
At some point your body stops being a vehicle and becomes a landlord who wants you out. Your knees have thoughts about stairs. Your back has a position on garden furniture. Your neck no longer turns fully to the left, and the GP says “that’s just your age”, which is doctor for “that’s permanent”.
And you will, eventually, injure yourself sleeping. Not doing anything. Lying there, unconscious, minding your own business. You’ll wake with a shoulder that won’t lift, and when people ask what happened, you’ll say “I slept”, and they’ll nod gravely, because their shoulder went in 2019 and never came back.
At twenty, you pull an all-nighter. At forty, you pull a muscle reaching for the remote. At sixty, the remote reaches for you.
Standing Up Becomes a Sound
Nobody decides to start making a noise when they stand. One day a small “hnnf” escapes, like air leaving a camping mattress. From then on it’s part of you. Getting out of the car. Tying a shoe. One day you’ll make it for no reason at all, just to let the room know you’re still here. The room will not have asked.
Hangovers Get a Season Pass
Hangovers used to be a morning thing. Now two glasses of wine on Saturday stay with you until Thursday. They don’t hurt so much as linger, like a guest who’s put their shoes on and is still talking. Your liver has started keeping a log. It’s going to bring it up at the appointment.
You Start Getting Excited About the Wrong Things
Young people get excited about concerts, travel and romance. You get excited about:
- A parking space right outside.
- Finding the matching lid for a container on the first go.
- Cancelled plans, provided you didn’t do the cancelling.
- A really absorbent tea towel.
- Going to bed at 9:40pm and calling it “a late one”.
This is it now. The excitement doesn’t come back. It just gets more specific about tea towels.
The Music in Shops Is Now Your Music
One day in a supermarket, a song from your teenage years plays softly between the yoghurts. Your rebellious anthem is now background noise for buying cheese. In twenty years it’ll be playing in your care home. In forty it’ll be played at your funeral, by someone who skipped the second verse.
Everyone Under 25 Becomes “Kids”
You’ll say “the kids at work” about colleagues with mortgages. You won’t understand their phrases. You’ll say “ha, yeah” and look it up in the car. One of those kids will be your manager. Then one of them will be the person deciding whether your role is “still needed”.
You Become the Adult in the Room
One day something goes wrong at a party, and everyone turns to look at someone. That someone is you. You’re the one with plasters in your bag. When did you start carrying plasters? Nobody knows.
The secret is nobody becomes the adult in the room. We all just wait for someone more qualified. They never come. Then the people who used to be the adults start dying, one by one, at roughly the rate the wedding invitations used to arrive. And you’re next in the queue. Not now. Just next.
The Good News
You stop caring what people think. Not entirely. Enough. You wear the comfortable shoes. You leave the party early. You say no without inventing a dentist.
Partly that’s wisdom. Mostly it’s that you’ve done the maths on how many parties you’ve got left, and this one isn’t making the cut.
Also, the bin really is very good. It has a soft-close lid. It’ll outlast the knees.