I have officially reached….THAT age.

I blame the rapid growth of technology, though it may all be Paris Hilton’s fault.  I don’t why, but I just had a Kathy Griffin-esque urge to blame it on Paris.  Regardless of whether it’s the doing of that overly blond, overly tall “socialite” or not, I came to the conclusion today that I am officially….THAT age.

I have reached a weird go-between point (a first of many, I’m sure).  I can clearly remember times when I honestly thought I knew what I was talking about, but when I hear 18 year olds now say the same things I did then, I think they might be slightly retarded.  Not long ago, all the people I liked on television were older than me, something to aspire to (or fantasize about).  Now all my favorite wrestlers are in their early 20s…I’m in older sister and aunt territory!  And as for the fantasizing, now it just seems kind of dirty.  Like I might soon be tempted into entering cougar territory.  Yikes.

I often find myself saying things like, “back in my day,” which half amuses and half terrifies me.  My day?  Shouldn’t it still BE my day?  And, ever since my 27th birthday, I haven’t been able to look at babies without feeling my uterus do a back flip.  Four years of flipping gets very annoying, especially since my longtime mantra has been that I would love to have kids, if someone else would give birth and take care of them.  I love being the aunt.  This nesting-wanting thing is aggravating as all hell.

And let’s not forget those moments during conversations when I say, “god, these kids today are frickin’ stupid.”  It wasn’t that long ago I was referred to by people I hung out with as “the fetus.”  Too young for my own good.   Now I’m like the cool, kind of annoying aunt figure to teens statewide (or so it seems…sometimes an hour with one teenager feels like a week with five kids).

And yet I’m still in that place where just about everyone I know is older than me, which I guess is kind of helpful.  And I’ll always be Clarence Tunstill’s youngest grandchild (and it’s a long list).  What I don’t find so entertaining is that my knee pops sometimes when I get up, and those laugh lines I always swore would never bother me have started showing up at odd times. I haven’t decided what I actually think of them yet.

It used to annoy me that people thought I was 16 when I was 26.  Now I’m all like, “you need to see my ID right?  PLEASE tell me you need to see my bloody ID!”  And then I’m tempted to go into an Eddie Izzard-type bit of standup.  I don’t know why on that either.  I was just in the mood to mention the Izz.

Ahhh, the go-between times.  When you’re older than you felt like you were, but you know it won’t be long before you’re writing something exactly like this, thinking back on your 31-year-old self and thinking…she might have been a little retarded.  Yep.  I definitely blame Paris Hilton.