I feel old

Today is a day of feeling old.

About 15 months ago, my oldest brother lovingly pointed out a gray hair on my head. Okay, one gray hair, maybe that particular melanocyte had a bad reaction to Mr. Pert Plus and decided this particular hair was going sans pigment from here on out. One hair... sad but manageable.

Today I'm cruising along down to campus, on a day I don't even have class, to go to the library to study for a test that's well over 72 hours away. Clearly I am already behaving like a 70-year old, but what shook me out of my denial was looking in the rear-view mirror and wondering, "Where the fuck is my hair?"

Yes, ladies and gentleman, the hairline has started its inexorable march... towards the back of my neck. I haven't even hit the quarter century mark but Team Hair Follicles is throwing in the towel.

So the rest of the day was spent reveling in my now well earned right to be a cantankerous old grouch. Once I get to the library, everybody was talking too loud. We're in a library, people... Betty Blabbermouth, just because you aren't sitting at a desk doesn't mean you can bitch on and on with your friend Sally Stupidbitch about Jonny Jerkhole at the party last night. Last night was a Tuesday night, and you should've been in bed by 11 pm like the rest of us. (WHY HAS SPELLCHECKER WAITED 23 YEARS TO TELL ME THAT SHOULD'VE IS NOT A PROPER CONJUNCTION? I USE IT ALL THE TIME. IT MAKES FUCKING SENSE TO ME... SHOULD HAVE = SHOULD'VE. I HEREBY PROMOTE IT FROM COLLOQUIALISM TO PROPER ENGLISH, AND LOOK FORWARD TO SNEERING THE NEXT TIME SPELLCHECKER TRIES TO USE THAT RED UNDERLINE BULLSHIT ON ME.)

Anyways, by the "rest of us", I mean people like me that can't understand why our neighbors play loud music past 7 in the evening or why there's such a bright streetlight directly outside my bedroom window. If you get in the way of my nightly 7+ hours of sleep, you are liable for any crimes of passion I commit the ensuing day.

Back to the library. I am tolerating the loud stupid sluts as best I can. I am powering through oncology chemotherapeutics like the obsessive peRPhectionist I am. (I can't express how clever I think I am for just now coming up with peRPhectionist).

I need to take a break, so off to the bathroom I go. Oh hello, I guess this Asian dude is washing his hair in here. I mean, I'm all for the multifunctional sink use but... How long have you been here that you feel this is necessary? From my little fortress of solitude I suddenly hear the unmistakable sound of a vigorous tooth brushing. I chuckle as I hope his minty Aquafresh mixes well with the cologne-esque (colon-esque?) fumes from the giant poo I am taking 10 feet away from him. Take a whiff of this, stupid eternal resident of the library; I am old and cranky and you will bear the burden of my wrath.

Back to the private study desks after my private act of bioterrorism. I'm thinking I can put in a few more hours, until I look out the window. From this building and at this angle, there is probably the only unobstructed view longer than a half-mile on any place on campus, and at the farthest reaches of my horrible eyesight, I see the turf fields beside the rec center bathed in the cool glow of stadium lights. The club lacrosse team is practicing and with the encroaching nighttime darkness the field literally looks like the light at the end of a tunnel. A tunnel of pharmaceutical sadness.

I am looking down at this with what can only be described as a wistful yearning to be down there. Then I realize, how old must I be to be looking at anything "wistfully"? I actually even stop and think about how good it was when I could keep up with "those young guys"... who are at most 1 to 4 years younger than me. I suddenly realize that while I act like a geezer and may be a few follicles down from 3 years ago when all this pharmacy nonsense started, it's pretty much all in my head. I've let my self-identity decay into this learned helplessness of thinking I'm too old or too tired or too busy to do those sort of things anymore. While I enjoy being cranky and sassy with the young'uns, I realize I need to let myself act and feel young every once in awhile.

So I came home and played fetch with Guinness, then I whined to Megan about going bald. She tried to make me feel better by showing me wedding photography (she's got gigabytes of research on this stuff) with plenty of slightly balding grooms who still managed to look reasonably handsome.

Blah blah blah. I've gotten off topic, obviously, but the point is I'm going to try to think and feel younger. I've temporarily let pharm school turn me into an old crotchety man, but no more. Tomorrow I'm back to being 23 years young, and try to keep this mid-life crisis from relapsing for at least another 20 years.