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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To wonder how you recognise you're getting older

264 replies

clearlyaplasticgnome · 29/04/2015 13:40

I hate having to go out in the evenings
I love listening to Radio 4
I dream of retirement and moving to a nice village beside the sea (never going to happen!)

OP posts:
HellKitty · 30/04/2015 13:04

One friend being a grandma, 6 times over. And she's your age.

Songlark · 30/04/2015 15:16

We really don't get long enough at being young. If only we realised at the time how quick it goes. I wish I'd appreciated how young looking I was just 5 years ago. These days I hate having my photo took. A bad one can really depress me.

OnlyLovers · 30/04/2015 15:34

Sazzle, do you mean Waitrose Baby Bottom Butter or the 'Body' one?

I have terrible dry old hands. Sad

diddl · 30/04/2015 15:36

Youth is wasted on the young!

Frostycake · 30/04/2015 16:05

Has anyone else noticed how you age in 'spurts' just like you grew in 'spurts?'

Terrifying. It seems like it was only a year or two ago that I looked young, lithe, glowing and fit. Now I seem to have aged five years in five months.

I agree with the poster who said that nobody mentions the fact that when you age it's not just your breasts that sag; your face below your nose does too.

Very very hard to stay slim without starving too. I always feel one biscuit and a pie away from obesity.

ForkHandlesFourCandles · 30/04/2015 17:27

Being called Madam' and not Miss.

Anyone old enough to remember Dick Emery and that character? Its me now!

Madam just sounds so OLD!

Vickisuli · 30/04/2015 23:13

I'm only 37 but still ...

When fashion trends start coming back round on you again.... and again.

When I realise I am more likely to attend a funeral than a wedding... or that my friends are more likely to be getting divorced than married.

Considering swimming as strenuous exercise - in my youth my friend and I used to smile miles nattering away and not even notice we were exercising. Now a few lengths makes me feel knackered.

When I realise how quickly my kids are growing up. Only a year til my baby's in double figures... teenage here we come. eek.

LondonRocks · 30/04/2015 23:17

The first time was when I was on my 20s and was referred to as "the lady" by a mum talking to her child. (A sort of "mind the lady" type thing.)

I was bemused.

Got asked for ID in M&S a couple of weeks ago, though, so all good (mid-40s) Grin

Stinchcombebabycafe · 01/05/2015 00:14

automatically being given the pensioner discount somewhere without asking - especially disconcerting before I actually got to 60!

HirplesWithHaggis · 01/05/2015 01:26

I don't find it hard to stay slim, I've always been slim. But now I look scrawny rather than slender.

And yy to aging in spurts, I looked fine in my late 30's and throughout most of my 40's, in my early 50's I deffo look.... different.

Topseyt · 01/05/2015 02:45

When your kids talk about their school history lessons covering events that happened in your lifetime. Ffs, to me Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands Conflict etc. were current affairs.

When the teachers at primary schools seem younger than you.

mathanxiety · 01/05/2015 04:33

When you send your DD1 a birthday card and present and she calls to thank you and tells you she feels old, at 25.

Cockadoodledooo · 01/05/2015 05:23

Ouch math, bet that made you feel so much younger!

There's a line, I'm not sure what age it happens, but you go from 'falling over' to 'having a fall'. Think that would define getting old for me.

I've the opposite problem at the moment. Am nearly 40 with lots of responsibilities but just now inside I'm a scared teenager wanting someone to tell me what to do Sad

Kiwiinkits · 01/05/2015 06:10

I have NO IDEA what Tumblr is. Now I feel old! Off to google I go.

fanjoforthemammaries7850 · 01/05/2015 06:28

When the 20 somethings at work chat away to each other but stand there and talk to you very politely like you are a teacher or their friends mum.

yanniwoo · 01/05/2015 06:43

When I'm processing ADULT passports for people born while I sat my GCSEs..... 16 years can't have gone that quick!

When my 10 year old looks shocked at the fact I didn't have a mobile until I was 17, that we only had 4 tv channels til I was a teenager, and that 50p used to buy me a drink AND some sweets.

sashh · 01/05/2015 07:01

When you ask teenagers if they remember anything about 9/11 and they tell you they were not born then.

When you have gone from being annoyed at having to prove your age buying alcohol, to finding it flattering, to having to demand the person on the checkout actually asks you because you are having a bad day and even a coerced id will cheer you up.

Jackieharris · 01/05/2015 07:16

There are too many grey hairs to pick them out one by one.

My frown lines don't go away when I stop frowning.

There's a 'stripe' on my forehead as dd calls it.

Pregnancy is much harder.

When you turn up to a multi agency meeting with various professionals and they are all younger than you.

When you want a garden.

When you start doing the head up breaststroke in the swimming pool.

When you watch the news more than any other programme.

When you can't risk waiting for your ideal age gaps because you're worried about your fertility.

thetimeisnow · 01/05/2015 07:40

I keep remembering the 'older' ladies I worked with in my twenties and realise I am that age now!
I'm only 42.
When I mention my dd at uni and people don't go aghast that I must have had her very young Wink
Old hands too.

Ubik1 · 01/05/2015 07:53

Younger colleagues look at you like this Shock when you describe a time without email and mobile phones.

ScorpioMermaid · 01/05/2015 09:06

After sitting in a room yesterday (about 4 of us) and us all having Samsung smartphones.. One of our phones rang and we all looked because we all had the same ringtone, the preset Samsung tone.

Was telling my DH, he had a giggle and agreed..

You know you're getting old when you don't personalise or even just change your ringtone anymore.

SunnyBaudelaire · 01/05/2015 09:09

"....you start doing the head up breaststroke in the swimming pool.... "

lol @ the 'mum swim' so true!

Corygal · 01/05/2015 09:22

When a bath, which used to be a delicious scented steamy soak, turns into a pitched battle of scrubbing, shaving, plucking and ripping to the accompanying perfumes of medical products and disinfectants.

Orangeanddemons · 01/05/2015 10:31

Knowing I used to run up and down the stairs at top speed. Now I walk up slowly using the bannister to help.

The fact that my moustache seems to be the most fertile and lush part of me.

Waking up on holiday last year, and see a brown withered leaf on the cover...then realising it was my hand!

Realising there are no clothes shop which actually appeal to me.

Not caring what anybody thinks.

Realising that I was born 18 years after ww2, and that my son is now older than that time scale.

Seeing young children, and thinking that's suchand such friend of ds. Then realising ds is in fact now 21, and that child is about 8. This is the most scary on of all

JustDanceAddict · 01/05/2015 10:40

When your daughter is taller than you.
Not understanding the fascination with YouTubers.
Struggling to cut your toenails on your right foot (For some reason, the left is OK).
When you realise you are probably getting long sighted as well as being shortsighted - am avoiding the optician and the two pairs of glasses vs varifocals issue (OK, am not due for an appt til the autumn, but still, I can tell eyesight is deteriorating).
Worrying about looking like mutton dressed up as lamb and not wanting to look like your teenage daughter (we both have the same cardi from New Look but that is as far as it goes & she copied me!).