A funny thing happened on Saturday. I was playing piano in the School House Hour After and I noticed that there were some songs, which I had thought were über-famous, that large chunks of the audience didn’t seem to recognize.

This really surprised me, so I asked the rest of the band afterward. We noticed that it was an age thing: we had chosen a few songs that were no longer popular when Goshen College first-years and sophomores were of CD-buying age (remember CDs?). And this revelation started to make me feel OLD.

It’s not just that musical tastes change, or that I remember what a CD is (I even remember what a cassette tape is, though I’m willing to say our family was behind the curve on that one). It’s also the fact that I’ve had this conversation approximately one thousand times:

GC STUDENT: How ’bout them finals?

ME: Oh, well, I graduated. Well, I didn’t graduate yet, but I’m not taking classes per se. But I did do my senior recital this semester …

GC STUDENT: That makes you as old as dirt.

ME: You’ll have to speak up, son.

GC STUDENT: Wait, if you’re not taking classes, how are you one of the funnies editors?

ME: Uh … (puts on sunglasses, whips out memory erasing pen a la “Men In Black”)

Seriously, though! Graduating was always something old people did! As were paying taxes, wearing shirts with buttons and no longer liking marshmallow peeps.

Now every once in a while, I’ll pass a store and think, “Oh wow, I’d like to have that mahogany table.” Then I freak out, because the table is not an electric guitar or plastic lightsaber. It is a very responsible, adult, old-person thing to want, and this frightens me.

Now I know some of you are thinking, “Jesse, how old are you actually? Isn’t this article just going to irritate everyone who is older than you are, everyone who is not a student or younger?”

This is true. It is also part of my plan. Irritating people who are older than you is one of the best ways to stay young.

Another good way is to use Internet or text message slang when speaking or writing.

The worse you’re speling, the younger u look. Rite nowz, im about 18, bcause i still bothered to spell out “about” and “bothered.”

If you want to look younger still, like 14 years old, your sentences must resemble “OMGLOL!!!!!!! I jUs 8 27 Twinkeees now i haz 2 much shugrrrrrrrrrr.”

Not that I wrote that way when I was fourteen. When I was fourteen, we didn’t have the Internet, and it wasn’t until a year later that we got a dial-up modem. You know the kind I’m talking about.

You … don’t know what a dial-up modem is? With all those funny sounds and infuriating delays?

Heavens to Betsy, I’m doing it again.