So, maybe you’re starting to feel a little bit older.
Maybe you’re starting to sense your forties lying in wait for you, just over the horizon. Hell, maybe you’re just glimpsing your thirties as they begin to come into view and head steadily your way.
Or maybe you’re not feeling “old,” exactly. Maybe you’re just starting to realize that you’re drifting out of the central cultural focus, that the world is courting you, and you in particular, a bit less feverishly than it did a couple of years ago. It happens to different people, at different times, but it happens to everyone — and at some point, that vague suspicion all things youthful aren’t quite fitting you like a tailored outfit anymore coalesces into the realization that you’re … not old, by any stretch, but no longer young.
I can’t tell you when it will happen; I think most of us miss that actual moment. I can tell you, however, the day on which you will realize that it has already happened, and that you did indeed miss the moment when youth withdrew, forever, into your past.
For any pop culture junkie, in any year, that day is the day after the MTV Video Music Awards.