Barb's Burblings

I'm in two book clubs;

I'm in two book clubs; one with people from work, one with people from Fametracker. The work book club met the other night. I'm the youngest in it by far; the next youngest person might be around 10 years older than me (most seem to be around 40). Everyone's cool and it's a lot of fun, but sometimes it can get annoying. We debated what to read next and someone suggested The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. That's fine and dandy. I jokingly said that I could pull out my notes on it from college and use that to guide the discussion. We started talking about the movie, and I said that I had found it to be fairly faithful to the movie, but added that it had been a while since I had read it or seen it--maybe 4 or 5 years.

Then it began. "Four or five years?! Oh, yeah, that's so long ago." "You're so young!" "You only got out of college then? It's been 20 years since I left college!" And then it degenerated into more general comments about being young and how I guess life isn't difficult at my age. And it just got to me. It is possible to have a quarter-life crisis, and a lot of people I know who are in their early 30s have said that turning 25 was actually harder than turning 30.

I sometimes tease certain people about the age gap between us, my boss in particular. But in general, I try not to bring up my age. Or other people's ages. And it gets to me when people start in like that. Here's the thing: Life is never easy. It doesn't matter if you're single or attached, young or old, male or female. Everyone has a lot of things they have to deal with. We have a tendency to idealize our pasts; I know sometimes I look back and think, for example, that college was this fantastic, incredibly wonderful experience. And it was. But I certainly had my share of problems, concerns, worries, etc., during that time. I remember a former boss talking with another woman in her mid-40s in front of me, discussing how nice it would be to be in their mid-20s and single again. Examples they brought up involved going out all the time and dating tons of guys. If that was how they lived, well, more power to them. But that's not my life. And I don't really want it to be.

Anyway. Generalizations about age are bad. The next day, one of the other members came in and was like, "I hope you weren't offended. We were just joking!" And I know they were joking. But it still bugs.