I'm old!

I'm old! I am old! All along I have been maintaining the delusion that while I am advancing in physical years, my mental age has remained at around the age of 26 (younger in some aspects of my life - like people falling over - always funny!) but lately I have been forced to admit that I'm wrong.

The first clue I had was about a week ago when I saw some teenagers hiding behind my husbands car. I opened the door and asked them what they were doing. "Playing hide and go seek" they giggled. "Not here you're not" I chastised "You'll mark the car. Play somewhere else". And as they departed I heard them shout down the road to their friends "The auld wan here says we're not to play in her garden". I couldn't believe my ears. The auld wan? What the....!? First of all. It was only my husbands car I care about. I mean he is seriously devoted to that pile of metal, so much so that I think if you put together a list of the great loves of his life it would read something like; 1. The kids; 2. Me (I hope) and 3. The car. "He's the auld one!" I wanted to scream after them. "He'd sulk for weeks if his car got a scratch on it and I'd have to live with it. Do you know what it's like to live with that sort of silence? Do you? DO YOU?" but too late, they were gone.

Still it's not fair to blame my hubby really for my behaviour. The truth is that I am turning into a bit of an 'auld wan' and the signs are all around me and can no longer be ignored.

Last night I was so tired at only ten o'clock that I felt it was actually more effort to walk up the stairs and go to bed than to just stay and sleep where I was. I find that all it takes these days to induce sleep is a bit of heat and a comfortable chair and so much so now that I can't remember the last time I actually watched an entire film from start to finish. I made the monumental superhuman effort to go to bed last night and staggered up the stairs and managed to brush my teeth and wash my face without actually opening my eyes. I had a terrible fear of opening my eyes and then being wide awake and unable to sleep for the rest of the night. I live in fear of not getting my full eight hours every night - another sign of old age.

And back to teenagers. Why is it that I never want to be anywhere that they are anymore? On Saturday we brought the kids to St. Patrick's well which is the local spring in Clonmel with a well (the clue is in the name) and an old church which my children call a castle as the only other time that they have actually been in a church was for their baptism (I'm sure that it is just me going to hell, not my children) so they actually understand castles more than churches. Anyway, the place was packed to the rafters with teenagers and as soon as myself and my husband saw them we both let out a simultaneous groan. We made our way to the 'castle' and found two teenagers standing in the centre of it eating each others faces. I mean actually eating. There were no hands wandering or any passion involved; it was similar to watching two people standing up and chewing a very tough steak. I'm pretty sure that neither of them could even have been enjoying themselves very much as the passion meter was zilch and were probably both secretly praying for the snog to end but each one afraid to 'break' first (lack of experience-Here's how it's done - break, sigh, gaze into his eyes for just a moment and then place your head on his chest giving a meaningful hug and start a conversation - snog finished!). We stood at the door for a few moments aheming and ahuming but teenagers have absolutely no shame or modesty and so just continued chomping away with no worries at all about having an audience.

We grumpily left them to it and brought the kids down to the spring where charlotte keep picking dandelions and running to the edge of the water and shouting "THROW" and flinging them in and then turning to whoever was present and shouting at them "It's EE-YOO-TI-FUL!" (Beautiful!). She kept doing this to a teenage couple and was fancinated with one girl who was wearing a pair of sunglasses. Charmed by Charlotte ('cos why wouldn't you be?) the same teenage girl handed Charlotte her glasses to see making me think that maybe all teenagers weren't that bad until Charlotte ran to the edge and shouted "THROW" and in went the sunglasses followed by a bunch of profanities shouted by the same girl who had just been adoring Charlotte two minutes earlier. You could hardly hear Charlottes "It's ee-yoo-ti-ful" over her screeching,so I decided that a swift exit was in order but all the way home we kept talking about how shocking the teenager's language was and God love us but how funny it was when the glasses went splash into the water. In fact I'm still smiling now while typing this but such shock at a young girls excessive bad language? - Definitely a sign of old age!

And I remember when I could take any corner at any speed in the car (except for that one time when I wrote off my car in Dublin but everyone's entitled to one crash aren't they) and how actually keeping under the speed limit required monumental effort and concentration. I used to have an email that I printed out in my glove compartment with all the Garda 'Hot-spots' in Ireland and I genuinely believed that it was only necessary to slow down in those particular areas. Those were the days when I used to think that Clonmel to Kilkenny or Clonmel to Waterford was only half an hour and couldn't understand how others said it was a good 45 minutes. What route were they taking I thought?
Now I trundle along at a safe slow speed and find myself tut-tutting at anyone who dares to drive faster than me. "Lunatic" I mutter away to myself, "Thinks he owns the road" and I have no idea when this change took place. It just sort of happened one day when I looked around me and suddenly noticed that I was in the slow lane.

I groan when I get up from the couch.

I groan when I sit down on the couch.

I check the price label on clothes even if the item of clothing makes me look thin (There was a time when I would have paid any money for a 'make you thin looking' piece of clothing).

The other night we had friends around for dinner and we all kept our voices down so as not to wake the kids. I don't think that our neighbours even knew we that were home never mind entertaining.

I have conversations with people now about the best sort of schools around and how good the teachers are. It wasn't so long ago when my idea of a good teacher depended on how much you could get away with in her class. The more destruction - the better the teacher.

I used to think smoking was cool - now I think it's vile.

The thought of getting up and tending to the kids with a hangover is worse than the thought of having the swine flu so I chose not to drink when out these days.

My son's computer skills amaze me!

I get excited at the thought of an eighties night out (as long as I'm home early enough for my full eight hours).

I think people saying "My bad" instead of "My fault" sounds so ridiculous that it is hilarious.

When did this happen? How can I get young again? Am I stuck like this forever? Is the future for me full of things like discussing pension plans, saving food coupons and saying things like "We certainly knew how to do things in my day"?

Okay, here goes, "Yo dudes (neighbourhood kids) - come and play in my garden and smoke a few fags and have a few tinnies behind my shed. Sorry babes (Girl in St. Patricks well) about your glasses hun - my bad! And you two love birds in the castle - you are just m.f.e.o (made for each other) and my little awesome dude boy who is so tech savy - I am so like totally in awe man. You rock!"

Am I young again? Am I cool yet? No? Hmm, I'll keep at it...