“A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Old age, you've heard it said, is someone ten years older than you are. That seems about right. Age is a funny thing. When you're young, a two or three year difference in age seems like a yawning chasm. Remember how in grade school all teachers, no matter what their actually age, fit into one category - OLD.
Do you ever think about how you perceived your parents when they were the age you are at a given time? Probably they seemed older than you think of yourself at that same age. Where am I going with this? I don't know. It's really just a reason to tell a story and play a song.
My youngest nephew has always been into music. From an early age he was groovin'. Even before he became a teen, he and I were trading music back and forth. He'd burn me cds of the stuff he was into and I'd send ones to him that I thought helped expand his knowledge of music, past and present.
One day when he was about fifteen, we were discussing a song I'd given him by Rhett Miller. Miller is the front man for the band Old 97s, but the song was from one of his solo albums. My nephew was saying how much he liked the song, but then he asked a question that made me say, Huh?
He said of Rhett Miller, “I know, but Isn't he like…old?” At the time, Rhett Miller was 40. I'm thirteen years older than him and I didn't think of myself as old at the time. Heck, Rhett Miller was just a kid. What are you talkin' about?
Like I said, age is a funny thing.
Well, Rhett Miller and the old 97s have a little something to say about age in their song, Longer Than You've Been Alive. Enjoy it, young and old alike.