Are you there God? It’s me, the_skeptic.

Well it finally happened today. I realized that despite my best efforts, I’m getting old. While I can find some solace in the fact that my generation is aging right along with me, it’s just not enough. I’ll tell you where I realized it. I was at the mall, in Spencer’s, looking at the t-shirts. And among all the profane, smutty, and death metal t-shirts was a section dedicated to icons of the 90’s. Ninja Turtles, Super Mario, Pokemon, Power Rangers; they were all there, staring right back at me.

I had to ask myself, “Who are they marketing these to?” I know that me and my whole generation know of these icons, but to the younger kids, they are hip and trendy things that harken back to a simpler time. I now ask myself, “Will I be able to tell this younger generation of my greatest accomplishment in life: completing all 96 levels in Super Mario World on all three files?” Or will these young whippersnappers in their cool shirts just look at me and say, “Tell me another one you geezer.”

I could have brushed off the incident at the mall as my mind overreacting a bit. But no, there’s more. On my way home from the mall I was flipping through the stations on the radio dial, and heard a talking head saying he was going to spin Kid Rock’s “Only God Knows Why,” on WPYX, Albany’s finest CLASSIC ROCK station. Now a band from my youth is in with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rush, Journey and Aerosmith; the perpetual radio geezer trifecta from hell.

But the horror didn’t end there. I thought about the car I was sitting in. A 1998 Toyota 4Runner, with 176,000 miles on it. I think it’s a nice car, but then you think about it, it’s 11 years old. Now it’s a car you see at crappy little dealerships on every street corner with ads like “Good Winter Driver!!!” emblazoned on it and the salesmen is willing to throw his youngest daughter in with the deal just to get the rusty bucket out of his sight.

CD Players now belong in the Smithsonian rather than in every kid’s backpack, VCRs seem like some weird internet abbrevation that no one knows the true meaning of, and let’s face facts, ‘Pogs‘ really weren’t as cool as we all thought they were.

But fear not, there is still hope for us as we slowy retire into the real world. Only we know the true joy of an episode of Rocko’s Modern Life brings (the_skeptic has them all on DVD, tee-hee), or the primal rage of conducting a fatality on your opponent in Mortal Kombat II, and that is just fine with me. Let us be a generation that can keep up with the times, but never forget where our roots lie. It’s time to accept that we are getting older.

So the next time you have a “mall moment” like I did, don’t think “damn I’m getting old,” think “I’m gonna buy this shirt and proclaim to the world…TURTLES DON’T DO DRUGS!!!”