Try To Stay Relevant

I had one of those “only in LA” kind of conversations with a friend the other day, which included some heavy name dropping and some truly epic “I knew them when, blah blah blah.” It was great reminiscing and all. But the thing is, no one — and I mean NO ONE — other than us Gen-Xers wants to hear about this shit, or thinks it’s cool. Not the barista at Peets who was too busy instagramming to pay attention to the song on the sound system (you know, the one whose band I saw in 198whatever, when I got backstage and partied with them), and certainly not my kids or their friends. What they see in front of them is middle age, and no amount of Dude-speak is going to convince them otherwise. My friend and I laughed about various encounters with “these kids today!” and soon realized that we can no longer beat them; we must join them. So I tweet and post to my Tumblr, and I text like it’s the best thing in the world. I download from the app store, get all cray-cray with my Pandora, buy records and tapes (yes tapes) like I only just discovered them, and try to stay relevant.

Why do I care so much what the kids think? Well, partly because I want to stay up on what my own kids are doing before I become totally irrelevant to them, and partly because I have always been up on the latest and hate to feel like I am falling behind the times. Plus, if I fall too far behind I’ll have to start chasing after those kids, and it really, really hurts to chase after them. My knees are killing me and my back… oy vey, don’t get me started on that!