No longer snapping whippers

It really doesn't seem that long ago that I was the youngest one in the room.

For years, especially in my career, I was the young whippersnapper destined to make everyone else in the room feel old. In my Chevron days, talk would often turn to the energy crisis of the early 1970s. My much older co-workers -- indeed, they seemed ancient in my 20-something eyes -- would reminisce about how things were in an oil company back then. They knew because they were there. Inevitably, one of them would look at me and say, "You were probably in grade school then, huh?" With a smug little smirk, I would reveal no, actually, I wasn't old enough to be in school then. But I did have vague memories of sitting with my mom in the car on the "even license plate" days when we were allowed to get gasoline. At this, they would all look at me and seem to wonder when they got so old to be sharing a conference table with a mere babe. I never understood why they were so shocked. Surely they knew they were practically geriatric.

Last night we had some friends over for dinner for the first time. We knew they were a young couple. We actually have become good friends with the husband's parents, a couple whom we know are older than us but we've never bothered to do the math. Last night, it really didn't seem odd to be hanging out with this young couple. Until...

We were happily chatting along, talking about jobs and first houses and such. Then a comment came up about women astronauts. That lead to a comment about the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, an event I remember vividly from my senior year in high school. The Challenger comment lead to the shocking realization that the young woman sitting there sipping some wine was barely a year old when that tragic event happened. Tragic still, the young man hadn't been born yet. Indeed, it was barely legal for him to be sitting there drinking his wine while my hair turned grayer by the millisecond.

To their credit, neither of these youngins smirked or looked the least bit smug as I gasped for air and wondered where my youth had gone. Instead, they both looked somewhat confused as to why I was so surprised to fully realize how old they are(n't). Which I know from experience means they also wondered how I couldn't possibly know how old I am. How surprising to be sitting on the other side of that conference table all of a sudden, give or take 15 years.