If you've caught yourself thinking "Why do they print the instructions so small?" read on. Photo / Getty
If you've caught yourself thinking "Why do they print the instructions so small?" read on. Photo / Getty
By Bill Burrows
Yesterday, I was thinking about my poor, semi-witless friend as I returned to the car to collect the reusable supermarket bags I'd left in the boot, when - STOP! There's a whole funky disco jam-packed with warning lights going off right there. I don't hold with reusable supermarket bags to begin with and now I'm going back to the car to get them? I'm wasting five minutes of my lifetime to save five cents (and, you know, the planet)? Has it come to this?
Well, yes, I'm afraid it has. And while we're on the subject, here are 13 other signs you've just become middle aged...
1. You used the term "new-fangled" in a discussion with a younger person. In a pejorative sense.
2. You think that, technically, you might be too old for a mid-life crisis. It must have been and gone and you didn't even notice.
3. You have caught yourself thinking, "Why do they print the instructions so small?" but are acutely conscious that if you say this you will immediately sound like your parents and therefore choose not to. But you still think it.
4. You check the sell-by date on food in the freezer because you read something somewhere about it but you can't really remember what it said. It was probably that everything's fine for six months if you freeze it on the day of purchase. But not fish. Or chicken. Or something. Anyway, it'll be fine.
5. You notice on Facebook that "It's 15 years since Super Mario Sunshine was released on the Gamecube." You're supposed to go "Wow! That's amazing. Seems like only yesterday." In actual fact, you haven't heard of either the game or the console and couldn't give a rat's ass.
6. You set your alarm to remind yourself to phone somebody back. Press snooze three times, turn it off because it's bugging you and then forget to make the call. This happens so often, you go back to writing on your hand.
7. You work out how many years ago something happened, Tommy Cooper dying live on TV for example*, by going up in decades using the fingers of one hand before doing the rest of the maths in your head.
8. You check out the percentage rating on Pornhub videos before viewing (apparently...).
9. You lost your phone on holiday and, although initially frantic, were sanguine by day two and by day three serene. By the end of the week you had to be forced back on to the plane at gunpoint.
Are you secretly thrilled by the idea of losing your phone? Photo / Getty
10. You hear that a rock star has killed himself. You've never heard of him and are unable to recall a single track but the name of his band is sort of familiar.
11. You have just discovered that your child is having "sex education" lessons (although they're not called that anymore) at primary school and are pretty sure that that could have waited a few years.
12. You are told that Schwarzenegger movie "The Running Man" is set in 2017. It is. Unfortunately, you remember going to watch it at the cinema and thinking that it could feasibly become reality given the huge yawning chasm of time between then and er... now.
13. You are having the "internal trainer dialogue". Not whether you should get a personal one but whether you can still get away with classic Adidas. The answer's probably "No".
Is that 13 or 14? I forget. Time for my meds. Cissy, is that you?
