Old Lady Me

It turns out that I'm a lot older than I knew. I thought I was still young, but it would seem I am decidedly not.

This epiphany struck tonight while I was giving my teenage bro-in-law his second English lesson.

He's a cool kid, so teaching him English is kind of fun, and it also means I have someone to talk to. And let's face it folks, I get lonely talking to my blog all the time. Hanix is still a lousy conversationalist (though he's mastered the razz pretty well), and Hernan is just not around much of the time (apparently he forgot how exciting and cool I am). So English classes it is!

Hanging out with a seventeen-year-old, though, has made it clear just how not young I am. Ah, San Juan! Where it's normal to be married and babied by 18 (if not 15) and old-lady-me is positively not in with the in crowd.

But this I'd already figured out. What drove it home was every pop culture reference I tried to use to get kid brother to remember the words I'm teaching him. They all fell flat.

Here are some examples:

"Bad": I start singing Michael Jackson's "Bad". Blank stare.
"Forest": I say "Run, Forrest, Run!". No clue. I admit, a poor attempt.
"Y" (the letter): I (of course) start singing and dancing "Y-M-C-A". Crickets.

The list goes on. Tonight involved a lot of me singing and him staring. Maybe not so helpful, then.

In a related story, nobody here seems to have ever heard of David Bowie. I'm not exactly a Bowie fan, but I thought he was famous enough to have made it to Mexico. Even my thirty-something sis-in-law doesn't know him, so I guess not everything can be attributed to generational differences and my ancient-ness.

Anyway, holy shitballs I gotta get back to the Bay. Before I break a hip!