On age, #1

As the number 30 steadily encroaches upon my nubile being, I figure it an appropriate time for age evaluation. But it’s important to strike a balance, I think, so as not to fashion a noose out of the knitting to my left upon finishing this entry. And with that, a list begins—some old, some young; some positive, some a bit cynical. Just one for this evening, as it’s late, and I’m old…er…than I used to be.

1) It makes me feel old when I try to train someone younger at work, and I wonder if they are mentally rolling their eyes.

Really, I do worry about this. I remember going insane when older folks would try to teach me things in a Windows world, when they were much more comfortable with a C prompt. It would take them oh-so-long to find something with the cursor, and even longer to use a drop-down menu. They behaved as though the “File > Save” command in MS Word changed locations at random. Each trip to mail merge was a painfully slow excavation, despite the fact that it was used at least weekly. A supervisor of mine was beholden to me for a good month’s worth of lattes after making her acquaintance with “Undo.”

And the Internet? Forget about it.

And so, I find myself in a similar predicament, at the ripe old age of 29. In a time where the average American 12-year-old understands HTML better than the proper use of apostrophes in their native tongue, the concern isn’t sheer paranoia.

Have I become the modern-day equivalent of the VCR that always blinks 12:00?

I try to deflect any feelings of “duh” from the kiddies by making clear my assumptions that most of the stuff I’m showing them is old hat, going quickly over things, using a lot of “yada, yada, yada.” I figure they’ll stop me if I’m going too fast and ask questions, or, more likely, suck at their work the first few times, and then I’ll correct them here and there, and all will be well.

Know-it-all little brats.