What’s My Age Again?
Recently while running errands in Des Moines, my boyfriend Chad and I found a new bookstore in an old strip mall, a Half Price Books. We were forced to browse until we had exhausted all the areas we could possibly be interested in browsing. Besides books, magazines, comics, movies, and records they had used CDs, so we picked up a couple for our collection in Chad’s car. I got one of the Drive-By Truckers albums because I really like one of their songs so I wanted to hear some more. And then I picked up Now 3, from the Now That’s What I Call Music series. I’ve been reading about this series, and it turns out that it originates in the UK, and later the series came to the US. While it started in the UK way back in 1983, the year my parents were married, the first Now CD in the U.S. was released in October 1998, when I was a month or so into 7th grade.
Amidst my friends’ imaginary rivalries over Sean or Joey (the “hot” boys in our class), and the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync, but a couple years after discussion of our favorite Power Rangers (did you know the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers only lasted for three seasons?), the Now series began in this country. Most of the songs were ones you’d heard on the radio, and already knew the lyrics by heart through sheer osmosis. It’s like listening to the radio without the ads or the obnoxious DJ. My sister collected them more than I did, but I certainly remember listening to them. We probably owned the third one, maybe it is somewhere in a box in my sister’s room at home. Now 3 came out in December 1999, the winter before I graduated from 8th grade – I was 14, Elián González was in Miami, and Y2K was looming. The CD contains a song from Britney’s first (and at the time only) album, though it was her second time being featured on a Now CD.
Chad and I rocked out to our new treasure on our trips to different stores in the city, and then on the hour drive back to Grinnell. We sang along to hits like Smash Mouth’s “All Star”, Blessed Union of Souls’ “Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me for Me)”, and the Backstreet Boys’ “All I Have to Give”. The most startling hit of the 90s for me was track 3, Blink 182’s “What’s My Age Again?”. This is one of those songs that I knew most of the lyrics to back in the day, and came back right away when we heard it again in 2009. That’s right, 10 years later.
Do you remember the song? The protagonist is a jerk with ADD, or something. He turns on the TV while making out with his girlfriend, and then prank calls her mom from a pay phone. It’s about people telling him to act his age. The part that caught my attention when we heard it again in the car was what age he actually is in the song. The guy is 23. That’s right, my current age. Hearing this made me a little crazy in the head for a portion of our drive a few Saturdays ago.
The thing is, when we first started listening to the song, I remembered that the guy was fairly old, even though I didn’t specifically remember the age until it came up in the song. I was barely a teenager when the song came out, so of course 23 probably sounded impossibly far away. In a way, it was – I still had high school and college to experience before I would be 23. It’s funny though, how part of my memory of hearing this song was about how he didn’t act his age, and his age is old, but he acts young, and now I kinda get it, but also feel like I have no idea how to act like I am 23. Maybe because I’ve never prank called anyone, I don’t know how old people are when they do that, and any time I’ve had someone making out with me, I’m usually far to involved in this activity to give a damn about TV- maybe if we’d had cable when I was growing up. And because I’m used to being “old” now, and even though I am acting responsibly when I show up at work and pay my rent and feed my cats, I still feel so immature sometimes, and at home, when it’s just me and Chad and our fuzzy pet friends, we don’t seem to know what age we are – we just watch Buffy when we feel like it, sleep in when we have nowhere to go, and dance like crazy to our favorite songs on the radio.
All of this to say, it’s gonna take me a while yet to adjust to being old by my 14 year old self’s standards. And also, regardless of how old I might feel or how young I may seem, I don’t envy young Abby her position – I’d much rather act immature than be it, and I’d rather have fuzzy friends than boy-crazy ones, and I’m much happier listening to hits from the 90’s now than when they first airwaves.
Last thought: One of my favorite lines in this song is: “What the hell is caller ID?”, which comes after he talks about calling his girlfriend’s mom from a pay phone while claiming to be the police. I love it because I enjoy being reminded of the advent of technology that we now take for granted. I remember the time before caller ID, closely followed by my being unable to function without it. And now I know less then 10 phone numbers by heart thanks to the ubiquitous cell phone. Anyway, good times, and that’s all I’ve got for the day.
