You know you might be getting old if...

I tend to think of myself as 50-something going on about 20.

This gets me in trouble sometimes with people who want me to act my age. Whatever that means.

Sometimes it seems like they mean that it's time to go sit in a rocking chair and complain about my aches and pains all the time and be boring. Or turn conservative, or something. And that's just not me. It's kind of like when I was getting ready to turn 30, and all of my mother's friends kept telling me that I had to cut my hair short. They didn't like it much when I kept asking who made that rule.

Over twenty years later, and my hair is still long, so you can see how seriously I took them about that.

But, after last night, I think I might finally be getting old.

I went to bed early last night, but I do that sometimes. This doesn't mean I go to sleep early. I can still read in bed, or write, or watch TV. Like last night. I was doing some research for a writing project, reading and taking notes. When a new TV show I've been watching came on at eight o'clock, I closed up my book and my notebook and got comfortable to watch the show. After the show was over, I planned to get the book and notebook out again and do some more work before going to sleep.

Instead, I was asleep by about 8:30.

I woke up long enough at somewhere between ten and eleven to turn the television off, but was soon back asleep again.

This is not like me at all. I'm a night person, often awake until one or two in the morning, sometimes even when I need to be up early the next morning. I like the quiet between ten or eleven at night and two in the morning or so. I do all my best thinking and writing at that time of night.

So, I really hope this is not part of new trend coming. I don't want to be one of those people who goes to bed at eight and wakes up before the sun. Unless I'm traveling and getting an early start on the road, I don't particularly want to see the sun come up in the morning. As far as I'm concerned 8 am is the butt-crack of dawn.

I come by this honestly. My mother was a night person. She often stayed up all night and then slept the day away after she got me off to school when I was a child. Now, I didn't know this about her until after I was an adult. She would go to bed just before time for me to get up so that I wouldn't know that she had been awake all night, and then she would go back to bed after I left for school and then sleep, sometimes until it was nearly time for me to come home from school. This made for an interesting contrast to my father, who was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of guy. He thought nothing of getting up at four-thirty or five in the morning, and in fact had to do so to get to work on time most of the time. He really was a farmer at heart.

I suspect that the reason I fell asleep so early last night was a combination of having to sit through a long meeting yesterday afternoon and eating a more red-meat-laden dinner than I'm used to. Food really does have a sedative effect on me. At least, I hope it was that, and not a sign that I'm turning into one of those folks who goes to sleep early every night and misses the best part of the day.

Not that there's anything wrong with sleeping early if that's what you want to do. It's just that I really don't want to.

Getting older? Yes. Growing up? Not if I can help it...

I hate those, "Oh, my God, I'm old" moments. Like the one I just had over on Facebook.

Although I suppose it's appropriate, since tomorrow is my birthday.

One of my friends posted on Facebook, talking about a co-worker of hers who made a comment to the effect that Enya shouldn't be called a "New Age" artist becuase she had records come out in the 90s, and that's old.

My response was:

Your co-worker makes the 90s sound like so long ago. Sheesh, I remember the first time the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show. I was only 7 years old. Closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had. No, really.

And it's the truth. I was 7 years old in February, 1964, when the Beatles first came to the United States and appeared on the Sullivan show. I had already gone to bed. There was school the next day, and my bedtime at that age was 7:30 p.m. on school nights. But my parents were watching the show, and suddenly I heard this wonderful noise coming from the living room. I had to get up and see what it was.

It was amazing, was what it was. I'd never heard anything like it, and I liked what I heard and what I saw. A lot. Changed my life. I was not kidding when I said it was the closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had. Starting the next day, when my friends were running home after school to watch cartoons, I was running home to watch to local versions of American Bandstand. There were a couple of them in the Los Angeles area that came on every afternoon.

What can I say. I was a precocious kid, anyway, and that music was infectious. That Sunday evening and the days following gave me a love of music that I retain to this day.

So, anyway. Now I feel old. Just because someone on Facebook knowns someone who thinks that something from the 90s is old. Ah, well. You're only as old as you feel, and if its too loud, you're too old. Honestly, I have days where it is too loud, and I am too old.

But there are those other days, the ones where there's no such thing as loud enough if the right song is playing. I may be getting older, but I refuse...simply refuse...to grow up.