Excuse Me?

I'm supposed to be making soup right now, Yellow Pepper Soup from the Silver Palate New Basics cookbook, to be precise, but I'm in my studio, typing. The RLA loves Yellow Pepper Soup, and I thought my dad might like it, so it was on the to-do list. Earlier in the evening I went out to get my car radio repaired (check) and stopped by the auto parts store for a gallon of anti-freeze/coolant, 'cause the lovely Zelda Bleu is leaking fluids.

Well, you know, once a gear head, always a gear head, right? So I loitered up and down the customization aisle and found a cool stick shift sock that had tiny little neon strips in the seams, and a set of techno/racing style pedals (gas, clutch and brake -- I only drive a stick), and took those and my anti-freeze up to the register.

The kid looks at the pedals and the stick sock and looks at me and says, "Are these for your son's car? Or yours?"

Well, bite me.

When did I start looking like someone who's old enough to have a son who drives a custom car? Or any car, for that matter. And that's when it hit me, like the wet kiss at the end of a hot fist.* I am not only old enough to have a kid who has a custom car, I'm old enough to have a kid who has a kid.

I turn fifty this year, and while that's never bothered me** it's never bothered me because I don't look or feel my age. Until now, I suppose, if some pasty-faced kid in a polyester shirt with his name on the pocket is asking if I'm buying custom accessories for my son.

I can't even write that off as some kind of male chauvinism, because if I DIDN'T look old enough to have a kid who drives, he'd have been asking me if it was for my boyfriend, right?

Well, crap. Let me count the blessings here. I'll get to join AARP and get some nifty discounts that I'm currently not even aware of. I'll get free checking at the bank, except I already do. Discount movie tickets? Um, hmmm. Stumped. What other benefits are there?

I'm not dead yet.***

So, what should I do this year to keep the wolf at bay? I'm thinking Paris for my birthday itself. Learn something new? I started teaching myself how to knit better, and how to write better code. I could learn enough French to get by in Paris. I could force myself to learn to roller blade. I could force myself to listen to top 40 radio to see what's popular these days.

Or I could revel in the fact that I'm finally old enough to have earned my bad attitude and curmudgeonly ways. Yeah. That. And Paris.

*Firesign Theater: The Further Adventures of Nick Danger
** Much
*** Monty Python and the Holy Grail