A couple days ago I went into the bank. It was just a regular day at the bank. Oh, except for the over-the-top “over the hill” desk decorations that greeted me when I opened the door. On the very first desk in the building there were yards of bright yellow caution tape, a bunch of black balloons and signs which read “over the hill,” and possibly some black streamers too. It looked kind of like this. OK, I guess they really wanted to show their co-worker that… what, that they like to publicly humiliate her?
I didn’t want to stare at the desk for very long because it would make me look like a moron and I was really embarrassed for the old person’s sake. As if I might stare at Oldy like an animal in a zoo. Oldy was not at her desk.
I made my banking transaction and on my way out the door I noticed a sign I hadn’t seen before. It said “Over the Hill! 30!”
30? Fan-freaking-tastic! Now I know why Oldy wasn’t at her desk – she was crying in the bathroom and drinking Bacardi 151 from the bottle. If I was her, that would have been Step 1. Step 2 would have been to find the perpetrators of this heinous act, no doubt the evil minions of this woman, and slowly pull out their eyelashes. But it was about 3:30 in the afternoon and she hadn’t ripped that monstrosity down yet. So I guess she was still working on Step 1.
If 30 is now considered “over the hill,” we are going to have a healthcare crisis in this country which will make the current healthcare crisis look like an awkward shuffle at a revolving door. We’re all going to be sick at 30 and dead at 60, presumably from all the new diseases that keep popping up. I’ll retire at 35, move to Boca and play Parcheesi with the Golden Girls, but my hip just won’t stop bothering me.
America is strange. On one hand, you’ve got a youth-obsessed culture always looking for something younger – a younger starlet, a younger complexion, a younger man. We love to put 15 year-olds on display for the world to see and either idolize or hate, then ruin their lives with media harassment and pressure. We want our babies to be reading and doing gymnastics by age 2. On the other hand, the baby boomers are all retiring and many women aren’t having babies until after they’re “over the hill” (i.e. 30). We have a larger percentage of older people that we’ve ever had. And with all our awesome medical technology we can keep people alive for even longer.
So why are we a nation of the old, obsessed with the young? Man, I really hate asking that question because I don’t have the answer. I’ll be honest. I have a ginormous complex about my age. I took my birth year off Facebook. I pale at thinking about everyone else my age looking really old, knowing that I must look old too. I’m jealous of people who are one year younger than me. And guess what? I’m not even “over the hill” yet according to my bank buddies! Not that I would even tell you if I was…
Apparently I’m not the only one – I Googled “is 30 too old?” and got 43,000 hits. Google suggested that I might want to know if I was too old to get married, have a baby, learn to box, start a new career, join the military, start acting or go back to school. Seriously?
Women are worried that 30 is too old to do any of these things, with the possible exception of joining the military? (Actually you’re out of luck if you want to be Active Duty Air Force, a Marine, Marine Corps Reserve or Active Duty Coast Guard. But everything else is open season). Well I am going back to school and I am starting a new career and I can damn well learn to box or act if I please. Yet I still feel slightly supercilious that I have already done half the things on this list. Haha, I’m ahead of you in the race to 30!
It’s this weird Peter Pan I’m-not-a-grownup thing, even though I do a lot of grown-up things, like going to the bank and writing about getting old. When I searched for Golden Girls I found this Golden Girl. I had this doll. Damn I’m old. I’ll be stopping by the bank again on my 35th birthday to cash out my 401k and head for Florida. Save a spot on the lanai for me, girls – who wants cheesecake?
