Introduction
OK, so you go to the gym, but do you Tweet? You don’t wear orthopaedic shoes, but can you grind? You own a mobile phone, but do you make calls with your index finger and leave voice mails?
If so, you may be acting older – a lot older – than you think you are.
I know, I know, you believed it would never happen to you. You thought you’d be cool for ever. And then, seemingly overnight, the evil young changed all the rules and you’re left feeling … well, definitely something other than awesome.
Don’t worry. The point here isn’t to act like a twenty-six-year-old: God forbid. It’s just to learn how not to act like somebody a twenty-six-year-old might snicker at. Or, failing that, at least to know when you’re doing or saying something that might be construed as a mite over the hill – even if you don’t want to change it.
Fans of hownottoactold.com will find this book features two-thirds all-new material, information that’s never appeared on the website. And fans of the book should check in regularly at the site to find up-to-the-minute bulletins on how to keep not acting ancient.
We may be older than them. And tireder, saggier, crankier and more overwhelmed. We might be loath to wax our nether regions or adopt the thong – but at least when we act old, we’ll know we’re doing it.
#1 Stop Using E-mail
Leave it to the evil young to get all of us old people addicted to e-mail, and then to abandon the form in favour of texting and Facebook. Like bikini waxing (more on that later), e-mail is proving to be one of the Great Age Divides. Old people can’t figure out why anyone would text, IM, or Facebook (wait: is that a verb?) instead of e-mail; how can you be articulate while typing with your thumbs? Why would you want everything you say to be public?
And young people hate e-mailing because it’s … old.
Well, I don’t care if e-mail is old; I can’t stop using it. That’s right, I’m addicted to e-mail, just as I am to dark chocolate after lunch and nitrous oxide at the dentist. I joined LinkedIn and Facebook and all those other services, and now I don’t know what to do with them – or on them – or however you say it. So if you want to get in touch with me, send me an e-mail.
Just make sure it doesn’t look like this one:
HOW NOT TO E-MAIL OLD: 10 MUSTS TO AVOID
12 July, 20091
Dear Pam,2
Thank you for inviting me to your party.3
Unfortunately,4 I will not be able to attend as I’ll be having my false teeth fitted that day. My teeth had been bothering me for quite some time.
You know how it is when your gums start receding and then you crack a tooth or two chomping away on sweets. Next thing you know you need a root canal, and then a crown, and then it’s just a house of cards in there.5
That’s what happened to me, and so I found this dentist, Dr Marino, who said he’d pull them all out for just £4,000, which sounded like a bargain to me, so I told him …6
So write back and tell me what’s going on with you.7
Your friend,8
Don9
#2 Don’t Say ‘Awesome’, ‘Dude’, or ‘Phat’
Slang is basically a shorthand way to let other people know how old you are. The problem is it doesn’t work as simply and directly as you might think.
Using too-young slang, for instance, can very easily backfire and make you seem older, not younger, than you are. It’s akin to wearing a yellow miniskirt or driving a Zipcar; you’re trying too hard to be comfortable with something that was obviously minted by and for a generation that came way after yours.
The word awesome is a prime example. Few people over the age of forty can say ‘awesome’ in what sounds like their native tongue. For the most part, if you’re older than forty, don’t even attempt to say anything more modern than ‘cool’.
Of course, you also don’t want to swing too far the other way and use outmoded words like keen, neat, or smart.
It goes without saying that you must avoid such adolescent and hipster lingo as phat, fierce and dope. Even typing those words makes me feel a little sick, and I mean that in the old-fashioned, barfy sense of the word.
It may, however, be possible to successfully straddle the young– old slang divide and come up with something both cool and age-free by using outmoded words with confidence and irony. Groovy!
GUIDE TO 11 YOUNG–OLD SLANG EXPRESSIONS
| YOUNG | OLD | SO OLD IT’S YOUNG AGAIN |
| Dude | Man | Baby |
| Sick | Cool | Groovy |
| Ugly bad | Coyote ugly | Sick |
| Feel | Dig | Grok |
| Bitch | Babe | Bird |
| Hot | Sexy | Dish |
| Fly | Cute | Suave |
| Ho | Old Lady | Wifey |
| Weed | Pot | Reefer |
| Durge | Creep | Fink |
| Whip me | Can I hitch a ride? | Can I get a lift? |
#3 Unstrap that Rolex
‘What?’ you ask. ‘What’s the problem with my watch? Ohhhh, maybe it’s that I’m not supposed to wear something so expensive strapped around my wrist. I guess that’s the thing that makes me look old, bourgeois and overly self-satisfied.’
Well, yeah, except that’s not really the problem. The problem is wearing any watch at all. The young do not wear watches. In fact, a naked wrist has become as emblematic of youth as ungrey hair and a perky butt.
Young people use their mobile phones to tell the time, and if you want to seem young, you should too. Just remember