Wasted Youth

As I was walking to the car yesterday, I caught my reflection in a window.  I had one of those moments when you catch a glimpse of your reflection by surprise, sigh and think "wow, I had hoped it wasn't THAT bad..."  And then I thought "yup, youth really IS wasted on the young."

I continued to mull this phrase over as I trudged up the steps in the parking garage.  "Stupid young people, having all of that youth and wasting it," I thought.  "I wish I had appreciated MY youth before it was gone.  Young people suck.  Young ME sucked!"

Then I started thinking about all of the other things that are wasted on those stupid, sucky young people, and I became annoyed.  I realized that young people get LOTS of great stuff that they just don't appreciate, like:

1. Good hair.  My hair was never particularly cooperative, but boy has it gone downhill as I've gotten older, and looking back, it really was nicer (though not necessarily easily managed) than I gave it credit for.  Plus, for the last couple of months, I've been shedding like a frightened cat in a windstorm, so it's even more disastrous that I have less of my uncooperative hair than ever before.  Darn you,  young people, and your glorious manes! [Shakes fist]
2. Alcohol.  Many young people use alcohol simply as a way to get drunk and kiss strangers in a bar (or was that just me?).  As it turns out, there are a lot of really fine liquors, wines and beers out there that are meant to be sipped and appreciated, not chugged and barfed up.  Unfortunately, having spent so much time chugging and passing out on pool tables in my own reckless youth, I never really learned how to drink "correctly", so I tend to avoid drinking much at all unless I'm properly supervised.
3. Confidence.  Young people are full of ego, bravado, and I-rule-you-drool-ish swagger, and yet most of them have nothing but their youthful good looks to back it up.  Yet, because they are young, it's somehow okay!  I am 37 years old now, have an awesome job, look pretty good (if I do say so myself), and a great family but I also have enough sense to know that brazen over-confidence is obnoxious and off-putting.  I missed my chance to tell the world to go fuck itself and shout my own praises from the mountain-top, and this makes me sad.
4. Preschool.  Let's face it.  Preschool - long days filled with Play Doh, finger paints, recess, running through the sprinklers and generally making mayhem - was awesome.  Did you appreciate it?  Did you realize just how fleeting those brilliant moments of joy would be?  Did it ever occur to you that when you grew up, you would NOT be able to dress up like a kitty cat pirate robot and parade down the street singing the "SpongeBob SquarePants" theme song at the top of your lungs?  No?  Case closed.
5. Dance clubs.  Dancing is one of the best ways you can relieve stress, especially if you're tipsy enough not to care whether you dance well (see #2 above).  Can someone please explain to me what "stress" 20 year olds have?  Please?  Anyone?
6. Dexterity.  Every young person I know can type an email or text message using only their thumbs in a matter of nanoseconds.  Very few of those emails or texts need to be sent with such urgency.  By contrast, I occasionally need to type an email response from my iPhone in the two minutes it takes to walk from my office to the cafeteria, yet I lack the dexterity to do it without significant typos, and apparently, using texting shorthand is "unprofessional".  NTTAWWT, but AFAICT, their texts are NWR so this really kind of has me ROTFLMFAO while simultaneously feeling FINE.  I mean, WTF?
7. Summer.  Young people get their summers free to frolic in the sunshine, run in slow motion on beaches, hang out at cafes and travel.  They don't spend the whole day staring at a computer, answering the same question for the twenty-seventh time, and waiting for the world's most interminable conference call to end.   They don't spend their days pining to go outside... they just go outside!  They don't wonder if they can make it to Starbucks and back in the eight minutes they have before their next meeting (AND have time to go to the bathroom?)... they just go to Starbucks!  They don't wonder if there will be time on the weekend - in between the laundry and the dusting and the dishes and answering emails and getting the child where he needs to be and trying to cook dinner - to go to the pool and relax.  They just go to the pool!  And worse yet, they look good in their swimsuits!  Gaaaah!

I'm sure there are many other pleasures and privileges in life that are wasted on the young, but since I am a grown-up and have this pesky job, I don't have much more time to think of them.  But thanks to the googles, I discovered that George Bernard Shaw actually expanded this famous quote about the foolishness of young people, saying "[t]hey're brainless, and don't know what they have; they squander every opportunity of being young on being young."

That they do, George.  That they do.  If only we could all be so lucky.