Longer Post about Getting Older: I logged into my Facebook account for the first time since 2008

Today is my 44th birthday. I am a teacher and have kept all my teacher ID cards on a lanyard since I started. Oddly enough I started teaching on my birthday, 18 years ago today. I showed my class all my ID cards projecting them on the whiteboard so they can see how I used to look. Year to year not huge changes. I used to have a little bit longer hair and now it is shorter, and you can tell the years before I started running again (2013) I was a bit chunkier. But even looking at pics side by side several years apart it's not too bad. A lot of my facebook friends from college and grade school have not aged well- I have been lucky in that regard- not much gray, no balding, not fat. I really credit running to keeping me healthy and looking decent for my age. I am happy now, married 2 kids house etc, run marathons in different cities each year, take fun family trips. I will say though that I have not really kept in touch with many friends, besides the occasional commenting on social media. I do often look back on childhood with fond memories and while I guess I wouldn't want to go back and do it over again, I often miss the simpler times. I try to tell my students that to some degree, to appreciate that all you have to worry about now is homework and chores- for the most part- but just like elders told me in my day, it went in one ear and out the other.

This was great. Time is a weird thing.

I don’t a think a lot of parents are very good about telling their kids to appreciate the time they have as a child. High school is such a weird time, and a lot of us end up hating it for one reason or another, but in retrospect it can be one of the best times of your life. It’s just unfortunate that we don’t have the emotional tools to handle the gift that is your teenage years.

I’ll never forget my last day of high school. I typically drove toschool my junior and senior years, but on the last day I decided to ride the bus home one last time. And I remember on the ride home thinking to myself that I couldn’t believe it was done. K-12 is such a long haul.

Mr. Basketball wrote:

K-12 is such a long haul.

Agreed. And then there's work - typically 40 or so years from your early 20s to your early 60s. That's like going through high school 10 times or going through K-12 three times.

I'm only in my late 20s but wonder how anyone can tolerate a 40 year long career. Heck, I love running, but I couldn't imagine being a coach or an athlete for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, and for 40 years of my life.

I had just the absolute best HS experience. I loved every minute of it. Stand By Me me demonstrates the friendships I had.

Anyway, I remember having the maturity to know just how good I had it.

As the previous poster mentioned deliberately riding the bus one last time, I walked out of the locker room one last time, alone, savoring what an unbelievable experience it was, and the locker room was ground-zero I guess. I feel infinitely in debt to the cosmos that I had the wherewithal to be cognizant of the moment.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have that level of fulfillment and joy simultaneously again. I have had each separately since. I don’t know if you can’t touch that magic outside of your youth.

It seems like people get too serious, and too demanding. I feel like I have not done so, and I guess I’m proud of that.

Don’t ever think you’re too busy, or exhausted, for an new friendship or experience. Don’t ever be too old to be a kid.

the road to retirement is long wrote:

Mr. Basketball wrote:

K-12 is such a long haul.

Agreed. And then there's work - typically 40 or so years from your early 20s to your early 60s. That's like going through high school 10 times or going through K-12 three times.

I'm only in my late 20s but wonder how anyone can tolerate a 40 year long career. Heck, I love running, but I couldn't imagine being a coach or an athlete for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, and for 40 years of my life.

Its amazing that its seems to go by in the blink of an eye when you look back. I think about my first job after college and I first think it was 10 years ago. Then I realize it was 35 years ago.

Well said OP. Facebook is a cesspool in some capacity but it does have value in other measures.

Dr. Fill wrote:

the road to retirement is long wrote:

Agreed. And then there's work - typically 40 or so years from your early 20s to your early 60s. That's like going through high school 10 times or going through K-12 three times.

I'm only in my late 20s but wonder how anyone can tolerate a 40 year long career. Heck, I love running, but I couldn't imagine being a coach or an athlete for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, and for 40 years of my life.

Its amazing that its seems to go by in the blink of an eye when you look back. I think about my first job after college and I first think it was 10 years ago. Then I realize it was 35 years ago.

Oh - work years go by so fast. 5 years in corporate office feels like only one year.

High school is a total slog. Even in retrospect it feels long. Think back to your first week of high school and then your graduation ceremonies and it seems like a decade long in retrospect. Look at photos of yourself as a freshman in high school and what you end up looking like in your senior photos and you look like a completely different person. It’s wild.

I also think it’s ok to call high school a peak in your life. You can have great stretches in your life as an adult as well, but I don’t like it when people rip others for loving your teen years. As long you don’t live too much in the past, it’s fine.

I’m only 26 so I can’t really relate to this like you guys, but I think the reason why high school and college are looked at so fondly and seem so much longer then what they are is because of all the firsts. First kiss, first true athletic experience, first beer, first dates, first jobs, etc. Since so many new experiences happen it seems to me that the years go by slower since they don’t all blend together. Once you’re out of college it’s on you. If you don’t do a lot of new things and just work abs socialize the years will all start to blend together. That’s just my perspective, it’s crazy to me that I’ve officially been done with college as long as I was in it. It was a big part of my life so it feels weird it was 4 years ago.

What I find most fascinating is that a lot of people end up where they should be. If I look at the high-acheiving types in high school, they end up being successful in whatever they end up doing later in life. The weird kids are still weird. The jerks are still jerks. The smart kids didn't get dumber. I don't really think people change all that much.

There are a few people who ended up suprising me later in life, however.

The most popular kid in our class (homecoming court, student council, football captain, t&f) ended up being a really reclusive person and not social at all anymore. I think he's successful*, but just not pleasant or very open anymore. I'm not sure why he had such a drastic personality shift.

There was a really rebellious girl in my class who had a tough upbringing who really turned everything around and is a big community contributor.

*When I think about success, I think about people who ended up doing something that makes them happy and they are effective at what they do. I don't think success is making a ton of money but waking up angry and miserable everyday. I don't feel like someone who drifts along aimlessly content and not improving themselves or their relationships with others is very successful either. Success, I think, is tied to growth and improvement.

I have a box in my closet that I've moved with me a few places over the years. In it there is a DV tape from an old JVC digital video camera from like 1999-2000. I recall having that camera and recording a lot of things going on in my life in my mid 20s. At one point I filmed a short interview with my great grandmother who was alive at the time. I've been meaning to take a look at the video but I don't have a device to play it on. There is a media room at the local library where I can probably play it and copy the video to a newer format. I've thought to do this for the last 10 years or so but never got around to it yet.

Mr. Basketball wrote:

I also think it’s ok to call high school a peak in your life. You can have great stretches in your life as an adult as well, but I don’t like it when people rip others for loving your teen years. As long you don’t live too much in the past, it’s fine.

I didn't hate high school and probably had a better experience than most, but there's a lot of sugarcoating going on when people talk about the past. If you could go back, you'll find that everything isn't what you thought it would be.

There are too many arbitrary and dumb rules like not being able to drink Gatorade in certain classes, needing permission to go to the bathroom, and being suspended when you fight back after someone else has thrown the first punch. And then there's the constant pressure - the pressure to fit in, the pressure to get into and win that championship, the pressure to get into a good college. Senior year can be good, but freshman year usually isn't. You're pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole, you're reliant on either parents or friends to drive you to places, and it's tough to earn enough money to buy the games and gadgets you want to have.

Thank God for age groups in running. That way you can remain at the top of your peak for a lot longer...

FB is a great way to maintain passive contact with people you have worked with, or gone to school with and collected along the way.

It is only a cesspool if you allow it to be so, just like anything. If you actively engage with people over topics of politics and religion, it will get ugly fast. But if you maintain civility, just like you would in person, and discuss families, and their well being you won't suffer the "horrors of FB" many bemoan.

Personally I am glad to be able to joke around with guys I used to joke around with in 9th grade, or see their kids and grand kids go through some of the same stuff we did back then. I see updates of kids that I coached, and now they have kids old enough to be in HS, many of them run just like their parents did, and it's great to see.

I'm over twice your age, but I agree with everything you said. Change takes place so much faster in those years, and there are so many new experiences that don't have the same impact when they happen for the umpteenth time later in life.

Sort of a tangent, but one of the things I love best about running is that it is so age-independent. Of course people slow as they get older, but there are still age group competitions to look forward to as another poster said.

peaked in my 20s wrote:

I didn't hate high school and probably had a better experience than most, but there's a lot of sugarcoating going on when people talk about the past. If you could go back, you'll find that everything isn't what you thought it would be.

True, it's easy to look back at things from age 14 to 18 in rose-tinted glasses, but man, I sure remember all the cringey stuff and terrible moments vibrantly. I just hope other people don't remember them like I do.

Cool to see all the responses on this thread.

Has anyone here been to a class reunion?

I'm 50. Some people I know have aged well, others not so well. Some people from high school are dead. I still have one parent alive, and two in-laws. That makes me happy.

High school sucked, I wouldn't care to revisit those days at all. It was a different time. We settled problems with fists and not shaming people online (yes, you could get "online" in the late 1980s).

At this age, I am looking forward to retirement. Money isn't a problem. Married, no kids. One cat. I can do pretty much whatever I want. And I'll be done with work by 53 or 55 at the latest. That's a nice thing.

If I had to change things, not much would be changed. I would wear more sunscreen. I would walk down fewer dark alleys while traveling (I've been assaulted a few times and have some scars to show for it).

I like the age I am. I like that I was born in 1971. I've seen an incredible amount of change -- records, 8 tracks, cassettes, cds, streaming, etc. I had grandparents who fought in WWII. 1980 is already 42 years ago. I was born only 26 years after WWII ended. Weird stuff.

Change is Good? wrote:

What I find most fascinating is that a lot of people end up where they should be. If I look at the high-acheiving types in high school, they end up being successful in whatever they end up doing later in life. The weird kids are still weird. The jerks are still jerks. The smart kids didn't get dumber. I don't really think people change all that much. .

Personalities rarely change. Even when the circumstances change a great deal, those people are typically the same as when you knew them in HS.

Like you I found that the kids that were the top students, went on to be professionals, the kids from shop class went on to work blue collar, and the stoners and wasteoids were in jail, or dead.

Vineyard Vines wrote:

If I had to change things, not much would be changed. I would wear more sunscreen. I would walk down fewer dark alleys while traveling (I've been assaulted a few times and have some scars to show for it).

f.

Do you regret not having kids? If you have a kid, at least you live on. Kids are a major time suck but if you don't have them, what's the point?

I'd relive college in a second, but I'll pass on a high school redo. In high school, you have very little control of your time and the people you spend it with since so much time is in class and organized activities. I also had ultra strict (foreign) parents which made my high school experience tougher than some people's. The only thing I miss, honestly, are the sports. I'd love to do high school sports again.

I'm 42 like OP. I'm very fit, but I'm not aging well - eyesight isn't great, lots of wrinkles, gray hairs, sun damage, general gravity, etc. Despite having a BMI around 21 and running 40 mpw, I'm borderline pre-diabetic and my cholesterol isn't awesome either. Aging is brutal.