What's Happening to Me???

Something strange is happening to me. Take right now, this second. I am sitting in a coffee shop that my friends and I haunted when I was in high school, in my hometown, drinking a cup of java and eating a blackberry muffin. My pants are from H&M in Washington, D.C. My laptop's open, I'm writing in my blog, and I have my headphones on. What am I listening to? MPR's coverage of Gerald Ford's funeral service. I wasn't even *alive* when Gerald Ford was president; when he died, I had to do a Google image search to remember what he looked like. I have since learned that he was the one who pardoned Nixon, he invited Emperor Hirohito to the White House when everyone was skeeved out by the Japanese, he got us, finally, out of Vietnam, and was generally a really nice guy. Knowing what I know, I started listening to the funeral at my house as I was eating breakfast, around 8:45, and it's almost 11 and I'm still listening. The church choir is singing. I haven't heard a church choir in a long time.

I wonder if other people feel this way, caught between two contradictory worlds, when they start to reach their late twenties and have their poop in a pile. I mean, I think I'm pretty cool still, and besides having a good job and my own house, I don't feel like I'm much different than when I was 20. But I'm listening to Ford's funeral, and that's not all. I was at a friend's house for New Year's Eve, and right after the clock struck midnight, I was out of there because I didn't want to go to bed too late. Another friend had a big party at his house, and I didn't go because he lives a half hour away and it had started to snow; I didn't want to get caught in any bad weather. If I stay at this coffee shop long enough, a bunch of dramatic high school students (probably no more dramatic than I was at that age) will show up and be annoying; I prefer the company of my 90-year-old grandmother and her friends.

The question hangs over me: what the hell is going on here?? I blame MPR. I am learning too much about the world to retain much self-interest that is the hallmark of the young. The more I learn, the less I'm sure about, including whether or not I am, indeed, still cool, and whether it's actually even important anymore.