Age Ain't Nothing but a Number

A few of my readers have mentioned that I may want to explain what I mean by "My DINK-y Life."  DINK is an acronym for "Double Income, No Kids." Conventional wisdom says that the older the DINK, the less they have in common with their (age) peers.  As you can imagine, there are not too many DINKs here in the 'burg.  So ProMo and I often need to get creative in our socialization.

And after nearly three years here, I did something new this weekend.

I ventured downtown on a Saturday night without ProMo. 

Yes folks, while he was off having a boys' trip to VEGAS [where there was plenty of NSFB (not suitable for blog) activity], I braved the downtown scene without him.

I'm talking full-out college kid experience courtesy of my T.A., L, and her buddy D.  We did it up: from the pre-gaming to the Pokey Sticks and all the Sharkey's and TOTS in between.

AND...it was really really a fun night!  It wasn't nearly as awkward as I had psyched myself up to believe it would be to be. L and D told me it was because I "blended in" so well.  They are sweet.

The good news is that the weekend festivities gave me hope that I, in fact, do NOT need to leave town to have fun and I also don't have to be afraid to run into students!  In fact, it seemed that more of them didn't quite know what to make of me being on their home turf.  One student (bless her heart) even did a "drive by" just to make sure it was me.  When I assured her that it was, she gave a dazed "Oh, hi" and walked away with a friend a tow. A friend who, L later informed me, is also in my class.  [My bad for not knowing that, but see this post for the reason why.]

The bad news is that, in the back of my mind, I couldn't help but think that L and D (who are grad students) will be gone soon.  And once again, I will be left with a crop of 18-22 year olds.  To paraphrase a character from my blog's pseudo-namesake, I keep getting older and they stay the same age.  :)

I guess the positive of this is that as they graduate and move on, I'll have more friends in various locales to visit and maybe they can just be my friends instead of my students!

Being a DINK is pretty interesting.  Because of circumstances, I find that I often relate more to people who are 10+ years younger than me than the ones my own age.  Nothing against my mid-30-something friends, but it's frankly easier for me to relate to conversation centered on the latest books, movies, sporting events, and music than talk of daycare, play dates and the perils of little league politics.

Which leads me to believe that it's not age, but rather life experience that sets us apart.  There's nothing wrong with it, it's just life!  And so I've concluded that there must be some "mental age" sweet spot that I've stayed in for a while now.  For example at my first job, my closest friends were all between 5 and 15 years OLDER than me.

So I guess it's true what they say...

Age ain't nothing but a number!

Act yo' age!