For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve felt a deep sense of aging; the inner-monologue of “man, I’m really getting old.”
“Yep Joe, you sure are.”
(Looking at self in the mirror, contemplatively).
But it doesn’t make sense, because I’ve been doing this since I was thirteen. Shouldn’t I be thinking, “Thank God I’m not 80!”? Perhaps I should. In fact, I feel better already.

Trick-or-treating is the first memory I have of feeling “old.” Halloween is a strange thing, because who sets the age limit for trick-or-treating? Surely last night, I could have gone around trick-or-treating, and probably come back with a bag full of candy, and not broken any laws in doing so. But I know that trick-or-treating is for “kids.” So at what age do you stop being a kid? For me it was thirteen; at least, according to one lady in my neighborhood.

I was trick-or-treating with Craig (one of my bf’s who was twelve at the time), and the first door we knocked on is this nice lady who always has the full-size Snicker bars. She comes to the door, looks at us like we’re bank-robbers and goes, “aren’t you boys a little old to be trick-or-treating?”
I think our reaction was, “Are we?”
And that was the beginning of the end of being a kid.
Granted, we probably half-assed the costume. Come to think of it, we may have even dressed as bank-robbers.

This year, I didn’t give out candy. I was the guy with the porch light off, hiding in a back room, watching Game 4 of the World Series. Then it hit me, it wasn’t that long ago that I was looking up through the eye-slits of my Zorro costume, at a house with the porch light off, thinking, “What a dick. Who does that? What kind of ASSHOLE, can’t give candy out to children just ONE day out of the year? ONE day! That’s all we ask.”

Well, me, apparently. I’m the same guy, I hate, and I’m having this strange dialogue with younger me where I’m going, “C’mon, give me a break! I’m not that big of a dick am I? The World Series is on! Don’t blame the poor guy with the porch light off – blame the damn commissioner of baseball, or whoever it is that schedules the World Series.”

I wonder if periodically throughout my life, I’ll become the guy that I disliked. Perhaps when I’m eighty, I’ll show up to some comedy show, and have a mean scowl on my face from beginning to end. Then older me will remember younger me thinking, “Why would you bother coming out if you’re not even willing to crack a smile you?” Then older me will go, “Because I lost the ability to smile in World Word 4, when I took a lazer right in the groin! Now I come out and try and find some joy, and here you are, the “entertainment” unappreciative of the fact that I had to take a LAZER, in the GROIN, in WORLD WAR FOUR! You asshole! You…me!!”

Either that or I’ll be like, “I’m not smiling because Frogs eat caterpillars for breakfast!” (Because my brain will not be functioning properly).