I Blinked and Now I’m the Oldest Person in the Room

As the “unplanned” baby in the family, my brothers were 10 and 14 when I was born. This made me the youngest person in my immediate family by a long shot. That sense of youthfulness followed me for years. I was nine years younger than my partner in my first serious relationship, born at least a decade after most of my colleagues when I got my first tenure-track college teaching position, and often the baby in my circle of friends.

And then—and here’s where the calendar pages would fly off the wall in an old movie—it was suddenly 20 years later.

Even when I was teaching English, journalism, and speech, my students would ask me how long I had been out of school, presuming I was close to their age. And I wasn’t that far behind, at least for awhile. I was buying my first house, running marathons, dancing in the aisles at Pretenders concerts, and trying every new restaurant I could find.