Feeling so old

I have been having this weird thing with not feeling my age. At least, I thought it was weird and just me until I spoke to some other 20 and 30 some-things and found they felt the same way.

HOWEVER

Through the magic of MySpace, I am talking to people I had lost all contact with for years. Some since high school, some from before. And those kids who will always be kids because they were younger brothers or sisters of my friends are married and having babies.

And they have changed so much.

HUGE case in point....my friend Amy. We were friends in elementary up through 7th grade (I believe) when she moved to Florida. We were best friends. We sat and watched New Kids on the Block videos until all hours of the morning, fighting about who was the better New Kid. She loved Jordan, I was a Donnie fan. We choreographed dances to Paula Abdul. We sang in church choir together. They lived so close and we were constantly at each other's homes. Her parents were like mine and vice versa.

Once she moved, I saw her once. We went to Florida for spring break and stayed with her family. Her dad is a minister and moves where they are needed. Her parents were SO cool, and her dad is the only person my dad ever talked to about religion. In fact, Dan baptized my dad, which was NO small feat I can tell you.

We spoke every once in awhile about how our lives were going, who our friends were, and so on. Then the communication stopped. There would be an email every few years or so, but nothing much.

Then, a few weeks ago, she found me on MySpace. We have talked more in the last two weeks than we have in the last ten years.

My point? She looks completely different. She is a classic case of the ugly duckling/beautiful swan. When I knew her, it was coke bottle glasses, braces and frizzy hair. Pictures of her now....she looks like she stepped out of a magazine. And her sisters.....Abby and Annie were always younger, always the kids who wanted to play with their older sister and her friends. We made them be the Barbies we didn't want to be. We had Abby play the cat in the Paula Abdul dance. We wouldn't let them stay up the entire time with us because, when it came to the New Kids, we were experts on love and they were too young to understand.

Now, Abby and Annie are grown up. They have boobs. They have the faces of women. They ARE women. They aren't the little kids who followed us around anymore.

This is not an isolated case.

There are so many people that have changed so much, and I don't see that I have at all. Sure, I've become thicker around the middle. My hair is a bit more curly than it was, due to the hair cuts I had back in high school. But despite it all, I still feel like I look like I could walk through the halls of Eastern High School and fit in.

And the reality is so far from that.

Another glipse at mortality? Is this the MySpace equivalent of finding more grey hair and wrinkles?