Growing Young

There's an atrocious phenomenon underway, my friends. It's called young people not having fun. Or young people being too self conscious. Or old people being cool. Cooler than young people, that is. Most recently, I noticed such discrepancy during the Five Points Jazz Festival and again the same day at the Inner Peace Festival. Nearly identical scenes occurred at each musically-motivated event: The older generations were the first to jump out of their chairs. In front of the multitude of supposedly energetic, excitable 20- and 30-somethings, the older generations boogied harder, better and faster than any of their tight-lipped younger incarnates. They weren't afraid of the attention; in fact, they loved it, and wore zebra-print tights and Hawaiian fedoras to match.

I observed this phenomenon in amazement. How was it that the older generations were showing up the younger generations at their own game- merrymaking? It made me want to skip out on all the fun and learning that was supposed to come at this stage in my life and go straight to retirement, where being self-conscious seemed ghastly unreasonable. What was their secret?

I've been thinking a lot about the grannies and granpies shimmying to Caribbean jazz yesterday. I wonder if through their long lives they've simply embarrassed themselves a sufficient number of times to finally be able to let go of worrying about it. The underlying meaning of that belief, then, is that all people will make a fool of themselves because all people are human. That's not a lesson that comes with time; that's a lesson that comes with acceptance and awareness. I don't need to be old to know that I can shimmy. I don't need to be old to learn how to boogie. And I don't need to spend my younger years trying to learn what do in my older years.

I think that Benjamin Button and warped chronology are bogus, and I invite you to share in my newest endeavor: dancing in public places to public music. You can think me a fool, but that just means I'll be a better dancer than you, FOREVER. I'm going to be old now, and young then, and everything in between.