Time out

This is not my beautiful demographic

by Kris Frieswick

Several months ago, I decided to buy tickets for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's "Young Patron" series. This series offers young people like me discounted tickets to performances, and a free reception (open bar) before each show. When I called for the tickets, however, I was informed by a courteous customer-service assistant that, in the eyes of the BSO, I am no longer considered young. Because of a birthday that slipped by relatively unnoticed last October, I have vaulted into the ranks of the . . . what comes after young? The not-young? Whatever it is, I am now it.

I remember when I had to ask my 21-year-old friends to buy me beer. Now I have to ask my 32-year-old friends to buy me discounted tickets to the symphony. I understand that chronologically this is a natural part of the aging process that all mortals share. Psychologically, however, I'm convinced that there has been a terrible mistake. I'm too young to be not-young.

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As Gen-Xers, baby boomers, and senior citizens hog all the media buzz, those of us in our not-young years have been largely ignored. This is because up until the minute that you achieve not-youngness, you're completely preoccupied with how young you are and how much you can't wait for it to be over.

When you're young, birthdays are like golden keys that give you access to things previously denied you because the Man deemed you too immature to take part. You hit 13, your first big milestone, and poof, you can earn your first

W-2 income without a special dispensation from the principal. Then, at 16, comes the coveted learner's permit, then your license. Then, woo-hoo, the R-rated movies, without guardian, at 17. At 18, as a legal adult, you can vote for our nation's leader, and you can register for the draft so that you can go into armed combat should one of those leaders decide to wage war on an evil empire, or on Seattle. You can buy and watch pornography, go to 18-and-over clubs, participate in the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, and travel alone over international borders to places like Canada or Mexico to have a nice cold beer. My 21st birthday was a milestone so momentous that I don't remember a minute of it. Being young means that birthdays come with great big life-changing privileges. When you're young, getting older is cool.

After 21, the parade through youngness passes fewer and fewer excellent landmarks. Sure, at 25, you can finally rent a car anywhere in America. Hit 26 and your auto-insurance rates plummet. But soon you learn that birthdays come without your permission or complicity, regardless of whether or not they are eagerly awaited. And not only do you stop getting new birthday perks, but old perks start disappearing. BSO Young Patron tickets are just the tip of the iceberg.

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When you hit 24, you can kiss your chances to appear on MTV's The Real World or Road Rules goodbye. Your 26th-birthday present is saying au revoir to your youth Eurailpass. Want to be a Navy SEAL? If you're over 28, it will remain forever a pipe dream. You can't enlist in any branch of the military if you're over 29. Why? Even the government assumes that by then, your youthful, limber joints and highly malleable psyche are starting to harden up like a can full of Play-Doh with the lid left off. (The Secret Service will take you until you're 37, which increases its chances of finding people who've had enough life experiences to know when to keep their mouths shut.)

These are just some of the many subtle ways that society lets you know that you are not-young. Further confirming it is the moment when your new boss shows up, and he's younger than you and makes more money. People give you strange, sarcastic smirks when you tell them you're really 29, an age that is apparently the equivalent of the last Coke stand on Nevada Route 50 before you hit the desolate, crusty sand flats of your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s . . .

You start hearing comments that end in "for someone your age," which used to be a compliment but is now a sign of the inexorable piling up of birthdays. First you wince when your optometrist says, "This sort of eye problem is common for someone your age." Then your hairstylist warns you, "This cut probably isn't right for someone your age." One day, the cute, 23-year-old cashier at the liquor store cards you, then, grinning coyly as if at an aged relative, announces, "Wow, you look really good for someone your age."

Then, a few years later, the epiphany comes. You're sitting at home after attempting unsuccessfully to buy BSO tickets, filling out a mindless magazine survey -- and you gasp when you realize that you can no longer check the 25-34 age box.

You are now so not-young that you must be lumped in the same age demographic with baby boomers and Vietnam vets and people who retire early and folks who own vacation homes in South Florida, and you stop filling out the survey and crumple it up and throw it in the trash and sit silently for about an hour wondering what the hell happened and when, exactly, did you go from being young to not-young? It didn't arrive as a big milestone, like getting your learner's permit or having your first legal beer. It just sorta drifted in until, one day, everyone (but you) just decided that you weren't young anymore. The worst part of it all is that you had to find out about it bit by bit, a Chinese water torture, with one small rejection after another, each more surprising than the last. Maybe, you think, just maybe you shouldn't have been in such a rush to give up the cherry of your youth. But, like all cherries, once it's gone, man, it's gone.

So you try to make your peace with being not-young. And somewhere along the way it occurs to you that not-young beats the hell out of middle-aged, and middle-aged beats the hell out of old, and old beats the hell out of dead. So you figure you'll stop complaining and go out and take full advantage of being not-young before it, too, slips quietly away like a silk scarf falling off your shoulders.

But you're still kind of pissed about the symphony tickets.

Kris Frieswick can be reached at krisf1@gte.net.