Aging Gracefully

     As I grow older, I struggle to stay relevant and keep my finger on the pulse of pop-culture.  And then while in the process of keeping up with it, I found it exhaustively mind-numbing. And I've come to accept that aging gracefully is about more than just covering up gray hairs and smoothing out wrinkles.  It is also about letting the new generation enter the pop-culture world, and of course to look down on them for it.  It's the natural order of things, and who am I to go against the natural order?
     Years ago I read an article about the way music buying habits change as people age.  To sum it up: at age 27 people stop buying new music, and they buy fewer singles.  They'll buy new albums put out by their favorite bands, but they are less likely to buy new bands' new albums.  And they'd rather have the whole album than the single.  I was probably 25 when I read the album and I thought "Hm, maybe other people, but not me.  That won't happen to me."  I was shocked when I was 29 and realized I didn't buy singles, and wasn't interested in new bands.  I couldn't relate as well, but I was really looking forward to new releases from Ryan Adams, Lucinda Williams, etc.  A ton of breaks sort of fell on my head.  They were right.
     There are, of course, always exceptions.  I've found new music and purchase it and every once in a while I'll get just the single.  But by and large, I understand the study and its point within the overarching anthropological study that is life. 
     I like being relevant.  I enjoy being able to keep up with all the references made on television, in movies, in books, in articles, and coming from my 16-year-old nieces mouth.  On the other hand, I also rather enjoy growing properly into my curmudgeonly exterior.  What fun is getting older if you can't remind young people how much better it is to be older?  They may have their youth, but that fades, and their things are stupid.  Our things are classic.