A Rude Awakening.

Tonight I accompanied my cub reporter wife (she's now writing for SU's student paper) to an on-campus function celebrating the Chinese New Year. The food was tasty enough considering it was prepared cafeteria-style in the dining hall and the Chinese musicians and dancers were entertaining; certainly enough info for Amanda's feature story. The real scoop, however, is that apparently SU now admits 15-year-olds. The dining hall was filled with tons of youngsters, surely these kids aren't college age.

What? Oh, those kids are all 18-22? No way, I didn't look that young when I was there. So, the university doesn't teach seventh graders? Well, if those little tykes are all college kids, then that makes me...OLD.

Seriously, I felt a hundred years old walking around campus. I'm now ten to fifteen years older than college students. When the hell did this happen? Sure, my knees are creaky and I'm going a little gray, but I don't feel ten to fifteen years older than those kids. While I know that I physically look that much older I guess in a lot of ways I don't see myself that way. Now, that's not to say I desire to hit a frat party and pull a few keg stands, but I would like to glance at a pretty co-ed without feeling like a dirty old man.

I also work with a bunch of young people; I'm amazed sometimes at the different perspectives and frames of reference that they possess. Leading up to the Super Bowl, our cafe sold cookies in the shape of "little, tiny footballs". I cracked wise about the cookies Ray Finkle's mom made in Ace Ventura and was met with blank stares. One girl said she had never seen the movie, but asked me to explain the reference so she wouldn't be out of the loop. I told her not to worry- that loop was a dozen years old and she wasn't missing much. I then adjusted my bifocals, hobbled over to my Rascal and motored off to the music department to tell the kid over there that he was playing that dang rock-n-roll music too loud.