I'm OLD.

And I found out the sad way - by feeling ridiculously young for just a moment.

Matt came home the other night with the CD version of Nirvana's Nevermind album. Now, I don't care what you think of Nirvana or thought of grunge music. I was their target audience, and they hit me HARD. I'll never forget seeing just a few seconds of the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on MTV and not catching the name of the song OR band and being so desperate to find out what it was. That SOUND. I was completely sucked in. It was so unlike anything else at the time. Of course, it wasn't long before they were the Hugest of the Huge and I knew exactly who they were and I had Nevermind on cassette.

I also quite liked Pearl Jam, and a mighty mighty raspberry to all who are thinking haughty thoughts about either band. But I digress.

Matt popped the album in his laptop as we got to the nightly crossword, and MAN it was great to hear again. It brought back great memories, because I was big into that album at one of the best times of life - senior year in high school, driver's license, Dad's car all to myself every Tuesday night (ah, the benefits of being a young musician). Basically, freedom and loud music. What more could a teenager want?

We fell to discussing this, naturally, and the conversation turned to what our children would think of our music. Well, they're very young, so they definitely won't like it now, and when they're older and might be into that kind of thing, they will have heard all the bands who were influenced by the early Grunge bands and not know how crazy new that sound was when we first heard it. And that's when it hit me... I'm getting OLD.

I know I'm getting old because all that I just said about Nirvana could be a word-for-word script of people I may have once considered old talking about the music of the 60's. Just substitute Hendrix for Nirvana and Rock for Grunge, and you'll see it. Those "old" people (who suddenly don't seem so old to me anymore) get so frustrated trying to explain that what made their music so great was how new it was, how different from all that came before. And soon, that will be me with my kids.

Again, a giant raspberry to those thinking haughty thoughts about Nirvana not having exactly a new sound. Thpbplbplbplb! It blew my mind at the time, and that's all that matters here. I don't care what it says about my intellect. I was young! Once!

But that's not all. It got worse. Much, much worse. Because for all the fun of hearing that album again, and all the fun of reminiscing, it wasn't long before I got very very tired. And headachy. And I thought, "Man, I wish he would just turn that obnoxious noise OFF!" And the second I thought of it as noise instead of Total Awesomeness, I knew I wasn't just getting old, I was already there.

I spent most of the next day listening to Mozart's Requiem.

Still have to say, though, Dave Grohl is dang good at what he does. He was a flaming good drummer, and I get a kick out of the Foo Fighters. Cute little whippersnappers.