feeling old

*Disclaimer* In no way, shape, or form do I honestly believe that 25 years old is truly old. Okay, now you can keep reading.

Last weekend found me on adventures with a group of 16 teens at "THE ULTIMATE STATE CONFERENCE" for Arizona Keystone Clubs representing Boys & Girls Clubs from across the state. It was a great opportunity for the teens to connect to other Keystoners from all over Arizona, and it was a good time for me to get to know other Boys & Girls Clubs professionals from within the East Valley organization. The weekend was full of great educational workshops and a decent amount of fun, too.

Now, I like to think that I stay up on trends in pop culture pretty well. I may be a twentysomething married woman with a career, but I am certainly not dead. One event of this Keystone weekend turned all of that thinking on its head. A dance. Seems harmless enough, right? I went to lots of dances in high school and junior high, and I've done a good bit of dancing at various events since leaving the hallowed halls of high school. Heck, I even went to what Playboy magazine considered the #1 party school in the nation at for the better part of my adult life (I heart Arizona State). Not that much could have changed in terms of popular dances, right? The macarena was pretty much a mainstay from late elementary school through my senior prom, the electric slide will never die, and who doesn't know the little birdie dance? Newcomers to the catchy group/line dances I've learned from the Club kids are the cha cha slide and the Cuban shuffle. Then I see the dancing of the high schoolers at this conference. Things like "The Stanky Leg" and "The Jerk" and two-step (no, not the country line dancing version). And when they would start to dance a leetle bit too closely to each other, I found myself wanting to find a firehose to break up all the teen-on-teen friction.

I guess when I wasn't paying attention, I was slowly but surely getting old(er). At least in the way I think about dancing. I wonder what the next thing to make me feel old will be...time will surely tell.