Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Old Encounters

In my line of work, I get to feel young frequently. I go on retreats, work at camp, go bowling, play laser tag and eat an ungodly amount of pizza. It's great.

However, there is another side to this equation.

For each youthful moment, there undoubtedly comes a moment when I feel... old. Like when I try and say some cool catch phrase that apparently went out of style decades ago. Or when I ask the kids if they have any Grey Poupon in their cars and they give me blank stares. BLANK STARES. Like I'm the crazy one. (Oh, and don't even get me started on T.V. sitcom references. The days of Uncle Jesse and Zack Morris are not even on their radar.)

Anyways, such is life. I've come to expect it. Good thing, too, because according to most adults it's probably just going to get worse along with everything else about my body or life. (Older people provide such optimism sometimes.)

BUT. Yesterday I had a "wow, I'm really old" moment that I'm still trying to get a mental grip on.

I was driving down my street and I saw the neighbor kids by the curb holding a sign. They had a little table set up and were waving at the cars going by. I thought they had a lemonade stand. It was adorable. I got all excited about it officially being summer time and kids being kids, but before I could even look for spare change I got close enough to read their sign. My idyllic thought bubble immediately burst into a million particles. Do you know what it said?

"WE CHARGE BATTERIES"

Seriously. What in the world? I don't even know where to begin with this extremely flawed business plan and what it says about kids these days, so I think I'll just abruptly end this post.

Geesh.