getting older
You can tell I’m getting older — that I crossed the invisible line over to the first onset of oldness — because I don’t buy new CDs anymore. The last CD I bought was Incubus, I think, but no, not even that because I got it for free from Columbia House. I paid someone $6 to burn me the Missy Elliot CD. (Plus others I’m ashamed to mention.) I know — old and a criminal, to boot.
I thought I would last until the 2000s, but instead I got stuck in the ’90s, which is probably the way it should be. When you’re buying the Top 40 artists of the decade, you know it’s time to stop. Throw in the towel and admit you’re old. The only options you have are going backwards — delving into the greatest hits collections of the idols of your youth — or going sideways: Jazz. Merengue. Peruvian water-flute compilations purchased at the Art Fest.
Leave the new songs to the newer people. Quit trying to memorize the lyrics of the nose-ringed set. Just lie back on your couch in your piles of dusty cellophane and tell yourself, “You know, I always did love The Who.”
