Tonight we're gonna party

On November 6, 1982, I turned 10 years old. Less than 2 weeks prior to that, Prince released his fifth album, titled 1999. This was, of course, the album that featured the song of the same name. So there I was, 10 years old and regularly hearing a song that referenced the year 1999. Back then, it seemed sooooooooooooooooooo far away. Sixteen years (more or less) seemed like forever. It was my whole life over again, plus another half... plus a little bit more, even.



Today, we have not only traversed that sixteen-year span that got us to 1999, but we've also done another half... plus a little bit more, even. (Put another way, we're more than halfway to being longer since 1999 than it was from the song to 1999.) And now, at 35, a 16-year span does not seem quite so long as it did in '82. I tell stories from 16 years ago like they happened yesterday. There's been no change (that I'm aware of) in how long 16 years last. What has changed, obviously, is my experience. When I first heard the song, I hadn't quite done two-thirds of 16 years. Now, I've done 16 years, and 16 years over again, and I'm a bit into the 3rd 16.



There's nothing real profound here - just an observation about how one's perception of a piece of time is affected by how that length of time relates to one's sum total of experience.



When I was in 3rd grade, 8 years old, some of the kids in my class decided, for whatever reason, that they wanted to know how old our teacher was. They asked and asked, and she finally decided that she would tell us on the last day of school. She did, and I can remember our collective "Oooooooooooooo!" at her revelation. She was OLD!!! She was TWENTY-FOUR!!! Today, I have a co-worker who's roughly that age (a couple years older), and sometimes that's just head-shakingly young. Anything that happened, or was on TV, or a new movie or song, when I was in high school --- she was like 6! What the hell happened to 24?!? When did it go from old to young? Must've been while 1999 was going from never-gonna-get-here to oh-yeah-we-used-to-think-that-was-a-long-way-away.