And tonight I had to admit it.

Oh sure, there have been signs for a while now:

-the fact that the music from “Top Gun”, the defining movie of my teenage years, now frequently appears in its’ panflute version as Muzak.

-the fact that when I said to one of my tutoring students, “Oh, we’re about to start the chapter on…THE PLANE”, he did not immediately respond with an impression of Tattoo.

-the fact that I began a sentence with, “When I was growing up in the ’70’s”, and the student I was tutoring gasped so heavily I thought he was going to implode.

-the fact that when I try to explain the parts of speech by singing, “Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?”, or, “Lolly Lolly Lolly, get your adverbs here!”, my students don’t join in and sing with me. Instead, they surreptitiously look around for the nearest exit.

But tonight I saw something that forced my out of my denial and into the truth: the cultural experiences that played a part in forming who I am are “officially” old. I realized this at the music store when I saw that the 3 disc sets of 80’s hits on sale for $9.99 looked EXACTLY like the 3 disc sets of the music that I consider to be “old”.

Clearly fictionalized stories of my childhood, involving phrases like, “barefoot in the snow”, and “uphill both ways” cannot be far behind.