By the time you read this, I'll already be dead.

    Okay, so maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. But I am getting older at a frighteningly rapid pace. I was just getting used to having the body of an out of shape fifty year old woman. I'm not ready to catch up.

    But I am, very quickly. We all are. I'm sure you haven't noticed it. I know I hadn't. I've been deluding myself all this time, thinking how dynamite I am, how with it, how supercool (and how modest)-- on top of it all, a member of the cutting edge Wave of the Future. But the Wave of the Future has crested, ladies and gents, and we were washed to the bottom.

    What brought this on, you ask? Why now, when we're in the spring of our lives, as young and as free as we're ever going to be?

    I'll tell you what tipped me off. I was sitting in my car one day, feeling with-it, hep, outta sight,     listening to the oldies radio station, when the song "Night Moves" came on-- you know, the one by Bob Seger. A song from our youth, my friends! On the oldies station! I tried to rationalize it to myself-- Matt LeBlanc was in the music video! One of the Friends! The epitome of cool! We can't be that old! But it was there, nonetheless. And when one of your songs is played on the oldies station, you're practically dead.

    You think I exaggerate! But contemplate: when was the last time you were able to do a cartwheel? Or even tried? Most of us can't! Because we're old! And who wants to cartwheel when they could just sit on the couch and watch South Park for half an hour instead? No one! Because we're old!

    Not me, you say. I am with it. I am cool. But admit it, girls-- there was a time in your life when you french-cuffed your pants and thought Scott Baio was the cutest. And boys, don't deny that you liked Krissy from Three's Company way better than Janet, and you thought Kitt was pretty rad. We all played the flutophone in the fourth grade, and probably still remember the words to the theme to Ducktales ("Ducktales... woo-ooo!") And yet, when our parents sing the theme to The Rifleman, we weep for their uncoolness. How much longer do we have before we, who bought our toys at Kiddie City and our Osh Koshes at Higbee's, are wept for by the Toys R Ungrammatically Us, Baby Gap crowd?

    As for me, I hope to grow old gracefully. I tried to fight it-- drinking coffee, discussing the philosophy of the self-- strictly avant garde stuff. But that doesn't change the fact that I can't do three jumping jacks without getting winded and that techno music irritates me. I have finally accepted the fact that, no matter how cool he may have seemed at the time, MC Hammer was not the end-all, be-all of the music world, and Mr. Belvedere was not the greatest television show ever performed before a live studio audience. We are the only people on earth who remember how truly, truly, truly outrageous Jem was, and can remember a time that we thought Ronald Reagan would be king or whatever forever. I don't have the power of Grayskull, and I am not She-Ra. I am old, getting older all the time. I only hope the next generation will have time to do more before they hear an anthem of their youth-- most likely the Macarena-- broadcast on the oldies radio station.