We use our home printer so infrequently that I don’t recall the last time its ink cartridge was replaced, so I’ve felt no sense of urgency over the past few months when my computer issued vague warnings about future OS updates being incompatible with it. Tonight, when another reminder popped up, I decided to read more, if only out of a sense of obligation to Crankenstein, who has no patience for anything tech-related and often requests my help by shouting one of my nicknames, followed by “I broke the Google!”
After determining we needed an AirPrint-compatible printer, whatever the hell that meant (it has something to do with Apple and either wi-fi or bluetooth or telepathy), I searched my Amazon history to see how much the old printer cost compared to its $50 Canon replacement: $185.* The latter number made me wince: $185 had been an enormous expense whenever it was I’d gotten that printer, just like the flatscreen TV we recently replaced that cost over $500.
The TV was 15 years old, which made me curious about the age of the printer. If my face wasn’t currently a rigid mask — it’s time for my bedtime levodopa — my jaw would’ve dropped when I found the invoice’s date, as if I were stunned and outraged: early 2004. I knew the printer was old, but to realize it’s 21 and that I’ve had it half my life was appalling. Despite a prematurely aged body, I sometimes forget I’m either middle-aged or on the verge of it. After all, I’m still younger than all the writers and actors and notable figures and older relatives I grew up with, many of whom are now dead.
How are Carly Simon and Carole King and Judy Blume in their eighties? It doesn’t seem possible; they were my mom’s girlhood favorites, and later mine. And then I remember my mom’s almost Medicare-eligible, and that a medical assistant asked me last year, while taking a history, whether I still menstruate, a question so foreign it almost didn’t register at first — why would that be in doubt? If hereditary’s any guide, I still have quite a bit of time left to serve, but didn’t it seem like just yesterday that I was at the start of a life sentence? Now I’m practically counting down the days until I’m eligible for parole.
But it’s my annoyance with modern slang that makes me feel older than my tired muscles and all the Gershwin on my iPod. (I still have an iPod, which my nieces and nephew will one day find as curious as kids my age once found 8-track players.) “What the hell does ‘based’ mean and why do I want to slap people who say it?” I asked Crankenstein a few weeks ago, while this week I found myself irrationally angry when podcasters in their late twenties kept calling things “mid” instead of “mediocre.” She reeled off another half-dozen words that filled us both with rage and then we settled in for another episode of a 1970s sitcom, secure in the knowledge that Marcia Wallace and Tom Poston weren’t going to say “rizz” or “sus.”
* We haven’t canceled our Prime membership yet. I saw a lot of teeth-gnashing this week about where to shop as more companies drop DEI initiatives, which is a waste of energy because most corporate (and academic) DEI commitments were nothing more than performative nonsense to begin with.