When others make you feel old

The other day, at my sister's house, we were watching a TV show. The actor was playing his role way over the top. It was so bad that everyone was making fun of it. I made the comment that he trained at Curly's school of acting and slapped my head repeatedly, making the sounds Curly would have made. My sister, brother-in-law, and their kids laughed in agreement. The four grandkids present, ages 15-23, stared at us and asked, "Who's Curly?' We all went quiet for a moment, then laughed even harder.

I just felt so old!

Most of my staff are millennial or Gen Z so, yeah, I occasionally make references that go over their head (I was born at the very cusp between boomers and Gen X). Not to mention one is a recent Chinese immigrant so they go over his head for cultural reasons rather than generational ones.

The ones that always seem to get me are when some celeb or public figure I haven't heard of in a while reappears or dies and I look at their age and go, "Seriously? Dang, I'm getting old." Gene Shalit died the other day at 100, for instance, and he was all over the TV at one point in my youth.