Well, it’s official; I’ve reached an age where I find myself reminding teenagers that I actually WAS a teenager myself at one point in my life. Some of them find this very hard to imagine, and I feel tempted to mention that it’s very likely that their parents were teenagers once too.

Thinking back, though, I can remember having a little trouble with that concept, and even now, I still do. I have two pictures of my mother hanging in my office: one holding her first great grandson and another when she was a young wisp of a girl dating my father. I know it’s the same person, but if I didn’t know that, I’d definitely have my doubts, so I can understand why people can’t always see the young man in me.

Admittedly, keeping in touch with your younger self isn’t always an easy thing to do. I don’t go out of my way to have conversations with all those versions of my younger self, but in a way, I always am. I think they call that wisdom.

I’m not sure which age I prefer. Sometimes, the sixteen year-old can be much more entertaining than the fourteen year-old, though I concede that he IS a bit of a wise guy. The eighteen year-old has his good points, though he does tend to wing it at times. The nineteen year-old has some pretty weird ideas about what he’ll be when he gets to be my age, but I can appreciate that he has grand expectations.

It’s important to keep in touch with our younger selves. For one thing, we all know that being young can be very complicated, but as we get older, we have a tendency to start thinking that it must be relatively simple compared to whatever we’re doing now.

If we REALLY remember being young, we know that’s a ridiculous thought, so we really shouldn’t be spending a lot of time trying to convince young people that being young is easy. Trust me; our younger selves know better.

For another thing, older people get caught up with the idea that LOOKING young is the same thing as being young. I don’t know about you, but when I was young and saw old people desperately trying to look way younger, I thought it was pretty silly, and at times, it was downright sad. I don’t think young people have changed much in that regard.

Mind you, when I was younger, I didn’t think that trying to look older was funny or sad either, so there you go.

I have to admit that I miss FEELING young sometimes. There are some mornings when getting out of bed and looking in a mirror can be a little unsettling, and I occasionally wake up with a nasty pain I didn’t have when I went to bed and wonder if someone broke into the house and beat me in my sleep.

However, I’ll keep on trying to remember what it was like being young, if for no other reason than it helps me put being older in perspective. People kind of expect me to act my age, and to tell you the truth, I’m not really sure I have to act. Being the age I am, it seems to come with the territory. There are moments when I FORGET how old I am, but I doubt that’s going to fool anyone for very long. Besides, if I can still THINK like I’m young once in a while, then I obviously haven’t forgotten what it’s like.