Husband and I had a date last night, and we were walking to a restaurant near the beach when a gaggle of drunk young women spilled out of a poolside bar into the parking lot. 

One of them yelled, “Hey, look at this!” and she pulled down her white bikini bottom and lifted up her beach cover-up. She had a substantial white dimply ass with some sort of tattoo. 

This went on. She walked across the parking lot -- waddled, really, since her bathing suit bottoms were around her knees - sipping a drink and wiggling her bare butt,  which wiggled quite a bit, mooning the block. Her friends were howling. Husband feared the image was burning into his brain. 

I have never been into looking at asses under the best of circumstances, with the exception of clean baby butts, which are of course adorable. But other than that, really, I can do without seeing anybody’s rear, including my own. I don’t even want to see the ass of Brad Pitt, though I would probably be fine looking at it if it was wearing tight jeans.  

But here I was staring at a particularly unattractive ass on a drunk girl. And there were a dozen thoughts that could have been going through my head, ranging from: “that poor girl, she must have been drinking on an empty stomach,” to “Quick, honey, call the police.”

This is what I actually thought: I’m so old. 

We all know the traditional ways to recognize the onset of middle age, and frankly, though occasionally disarming, they’ve not been terribly upsetting. The Diva likes to ask me to raise my eyebrows so she can run her fingers over my forehead furrows. She thinks that’s hilarious. I have a few gray hairs, but nobody notices because I yank out the noticeable ones. And I have the normal aches and pains, but really I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, and in better shape, too. I sort of have to be, since I am 45 years old and have a 2-year-old. How am I going to hold her down in time out if I haven’t adequately built up my triceps?

No, the real surprise has been watching myself get old in my thoughts, in my perspective on things like drunk girls taking off their pants in parking lots, or my attitude toward modern teenagers. At least four times a day I find myself thinking, KIDS THESE DAYS! and then thinking, I’m turning into a cranky old shrew. 

At the Diva’s day camp, for example, one of her teeny-bopper camp counselors mouthed off to me the other day while I was trying to console the Diva regarding her confusion about how to get in line to climb the rock wall. 

“Uh, I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he said, irritated, with hands up, palms facing me, like he wanted to push me out of the authoritative orbit he envisioned around him.

I had just come from my boxing class. I wore my all-black workout gear and my bandana doo-rag, and it took all my willpower not to push out my chest and say, “You talkin’ to ME?” I did manage to wag my finger at him, though, menacingly enough that he took a step back.

And I walked away thinking KIDS THESE DAYS!

In my defense, though this probably sounds like more evidence of my shew-like aging process, I do believe modern parents have been way too focused on fostering self-esteem in their children without teaching them basic manners, how to tie their shoes, and the importance of society’s hierarchy - as in, let old people have your seat and don’t talk to almost-old people as though they were stupid. 

On the bright side, I have more patience, and didn’t summon the manager at the grocery store yesterday when the bag boy said, “Jeez, what do you give those kids to eat, pure sugar?”

I just rolled my eyes at him and said, “This is what kids are like. Consider it birth control.” And in my head I added, “....in the off chance that anybody wants to have sex with a skinny little doofus twerp like you.” But I kept that to myself, of course. Which is one of the things I’ve learned to do in my 4.5 decades on the planet.

Similarly, I did not shout something obscene at the bottomless drunk girl careening around the parking lot last night. Husband and I simultaneously made the “tsk, tsk” sound and ushered each other forward like an old married couple. The only thing missing was a hand-knit shawl around my shoulders to protect me from the night air.

I must tell you, however, that after the incident made me feel old, it made me think about drinking, and embarrassing myself when drinking, and the fact that it’s high time I came clean about that. Stay tuned.