When you said to me

I recently turned 39. July 25. My 12th wedding anniversary too. July 30. I'm obsessed with age. Numbers. Time. Always have been. Every birthday since my 25th, has bothered me at some level. I simply can't believe I'm going to be X years old. I don't get hung up on the milestone years either. The round numbers. 30 felt the same to me as 28. 34 felt as odd as 36. It is always the same. I just can't believe that I'm going to be X years old. Then when I get used to being X years old, it is time to do it over again. That's life. Right? I won't bore you with my usual age obsession game of choice. I have something better. You see Dear Reader...STOP! Tangent time.

Someone asked about my use of Dear Reader in these here BLOG entries. I've always assumed anyone who frequented the Team Tinsley BLOG, got what I meant by saying Dear Reader. So, lest you think I'm being cheeky, which in a way I am, the true meaning of Dear Reader boils back to my original mission. Why I do this BLOG in the first place. It is a chronicle for my family - Team Tinsley. A remember when, then, then being the Buck Rogers future. Dear Reader is my time warp way of addressing the future version of the Boy(s). I'm superstitious, so much that I can't bring myself to type out their names in this regard. Plus it would be odd. Pretentious even. So I simply type, Dear Reader(s), with the thought that their future versions will know their Dad well enough to get that I'm typing to them, for them, from the here and now, which will be the past, in that Buck Rogers future. See, it does sound mighty pretentious, especially for my bad writing. STOP! Hammer time.

My age game today has to do with a recent snippet I read in Entertainment Weekly. In their Hot List, EW cited a reissue of the Girlfriend album by Matthew Sweet. The reason it was reissued was that 2006 marks the 15th anniversary of the original release date. The reason that got me is simple. That was the last new release album I purchased as a cassette tape. After that album, my new music would be purchased as a CD. Well, up until 2003 or so, when I started purchasing my music on iTunes.

Right about now, funk show brother, you are asking yourself, why in the heck would I remember something like that? Simple. 15 years ago. Actually, it was 14 years ago, since I bought that album in the Spring of 1992. That's not the point though, the reason I remember buying it was after I purchased it from the Sound Warehouse (which have went the way of vinyl records and cassette tapes) on Greenville Avenue in Dallas, Texas, I drove back to my Love Shack on Prospect. As I was getting out of my car to go inside, an old friend of mine rolled up in front of said shack. With him? Well, it was the lady who would one day become my Lovely Bride. She was far from my Lovely Bride at this point though. In fact, at this point in the story, I think she still thought I was funny. Not the ha-ha variety either.

14 years ago. I was 24 years old. She was 21. Now, I'm 39. Fuck me. 39. She's 35 (I usually round up to what she'll be in this year which is 36, but that makes her mad) and we've been married for 12 years. 12 years!

As Jerr says, blink your eyes and bam. Time. It moves fast. The older you get. I used to get so annoyed when he'd tell me that. The thing is, he was right. You see, I can still remember the first casette tape I ever purchased. Blackout by the Scorpions. I purchased it at K-Mart in Sand Springs, Oklahoma in the Summer of 1982. I had told my Mom that the 8-Track tape was obsolete. Casette was the future. I needed a boom box. I was right, of course, but at that point, I had no idea. I just wanted a boom box. Mom got me one at K-Mart along with my first tape which was Blackout. I wanted that album for the song, No One Like You. I liked that song (still do, actually.) So, there I sat in my Mom's car, the 14 year old version of me (soon to be 15, if I round up) loading a gazillion batteries into the back of that boom box so I could hear No One Like You by the Scorpions. So excited, and impatient (still am, actually) that I couldn't even wait until I got home. Blink your eyes. 10 years. Pulling up in front of the Love Shack house listening to Girlfriend in my car, about to see my future Lovely Bride. Blink your eyes.

10 years. Looking back, with my goofy little bookends of Blackout and Girlfriend, I'm amazed at how much my life changed in that decade. How fast it changed. How I went from a teenager living at home in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, to a man living in Dallas, Texas. How I went from seeing my Mom and Dad on a daily basis, living in the same home as them, to living in a different home hundreds of miles away which made it difficult to be able to see them more than few times a year. I think of the friends I had and lost during that time. All those changes that would shape who I would become, for good, and bad.

10 years seemed like an eternity to that Boy version of me sitting in the front seat of my Mom's Oldsmobile Toronado listening to The Scorpions. Ditto to the young Man version of me rolling up to the Love Shack in his Geo Storm listening to Matthew Sweet.

Dear Reader - blink your eyes.

Until I BLOG again...You are not so old.