Getting Old(!)

So, I'm turning 26 in a week and a half. That's not so old, I suppose, but I just had my first serious encounter with an object from my past that makes me feel positively ancient. My car. Here I was, innocently reading an article on lithium ion battery production (too many startups and discounts) when I started to think about when I would buy my next car. I got my car in college, and still think of it as a new car. It's a 2004 Honda Element. But wait... 2004 was six years ago now. My car is six years old. That means that if I had a kid at the same time I got my car, it would almost be six years old! It would be going into kindergarten, or first grade. Sure, there are other things that make me feel old, like the fact that The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails came out in 1999, but I was still a kid at the time. Lots of people are having kids when they're 20, which is how old I was when I got my car, and so it's perfectly plausible to come to this realization.

In summary, I could be the parent of a six year old human being right now. And that makes me feel old. Katie and I don't plan to have kids for another 3 or 4 years (after she graduates and gets settled into a career), which I think is entirely appropriate. It's one of the luxuries of living in the developed world that you can choose when to have children. Besides, there is a bright side to my brief moment of quarter life crisis - my car is almost six years old, which means that it'll be prime time to get a new one just as the second or third generation of electric cars are hitting showrooms! Sweet...