Top Ten Reasons I Know I Am Getting Old

As I turn thirty-nine, I present the top ten reasons why I know I am getting old.

10) I use the word comfortable when describing my ideal clothing and the word practical when shopping for shoes. I look at the "fashionable" clothes that teenagers are wearing, and laugh. Though I will go on record saying that I will never wear stockings with open toe shoes. Why do old people do this? Was this ever a good look? Or is it just that they have become so practical that they want to keep their feet warm and wear the shoes they like?

9) I was buying my son vintage globes on eBay for his collection and noticed the globes are younger than I am. I am older than some countries, and not just the shape-shifting African ones either. I realized I could say, "I remember when toys were made out of tin..." Soon the toys I played with as a child will be called antiques. Too bad the few that I had from my childhood were subsequently destroyed by my children. Inheritance, there it is broken in the corner!

8) I have uttered the phrase, "When I was a kid..." and the music I grew up listening to is played on the radio at a special day and time called the "Way Back Weekend." And you know the next step is calling it the "oldies but goodies." Who knew it was possible to wax nostalgic about the seventies and eighties.

7) I have a child who wears clothes bigger than mine and three who wear bigger shoes. Granted, I have elf-sized feet, but still.

6) I have known my husband and been married for a third of my life.

5) Every time I get the slightest ailment, I think I am dying and should seek out a specialist. I worry more than I should about dying and leaving my children motherless. And I worry about what they would remember about me. I really hope it won't be this morning they remember.

4) I have a "condition," albeit a minor one, and own a daily pill container, fulfilling one of my life's greatest fears. Namely that my husband will die right after he retires, that all of the kids will have moved out of the house, and I'll be left all alone eating cat food and rationing out my pills into one of those plastic day-of-the-week containers.

3) When I look down at my hands I see the hands of my mother.

2) I frequently find myself wistful for my body the way it looked in my early twenties, because from my vantage point now, I realize that was AS GOOD AS IT WAS GOING TO GET. Who knew? I wouldn't have been caught dead in the body I have now. But you know what? Thirty-nine also doesn't obsess over every bulge and dimple anymore.

1) I can buy myself whatever I want for my birthday, but like Ponce de Leon the only thing I want I can't buy. Though my area of exploration is limited to the cosmetics counter in my local department store.

Visit Chris Jordan's personal blog, Notes from the Trenches