I went to see an old friend recently and it suddenly occurred to me that my old friends are now, literally, old. Last weekend, I went to see my friend Mikki and I realized that I have known her for over 30 years.

I gasped when I realized this, sitting in my car in her driveway. I was visiting because it was the birthday of her eldest grandchild: I was the entertainment. But I was trying to figure out how long I had known Mikki, and the conversation in my head was going something like this:

“How long have I known Mikki? Hm. OK, well, Bill and I got married at their old house in Fitchburg, and we got married in 1990, so that was 28 years ago this past Dec. 8. But I had known her for a while then. Let’s see. . .I met her at Digital, and I started there in ’84, but I probably did not know her until I went to the Layered Products group, and I think that was 1986. Yikes! Thirty-three years??”

That’s when I gasped.

I did it again when I went to a party recently with my friend Judy, another old friend of mine from Digital. I remember when she got married; I remember the baby shower for her daughter Gina. It occurred to me that I have known her for over 30 years, too.

I guess I’m old.

My mother, who just turned 86, told me that the problem with aging is not only that your body changes; it’s that you still feel like you’re 16. I’m not sure that I feel 16; I know that I don’t feel old.

But I am. There’s no getting around it: I remember the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That’s old. Not ancient: I wasn’t in school yet. I was watching television and my mother, who had a super-long cord installed on the wall phone so she could walk through our little house and see what each of her children was up to, was on the phone and I went and tugged on the cord and said, “They just said the president was shot.” Mom said, “Hang on” to whoever was on the phone and walked to the living room with me.

I remember it vividly, because I had never seen my mother that upset.

I remember lots of, as my daughter Lucy calls them, “old people things.” The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Being awakened from a sound sleep to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. History.

I was a counselor-in-training at Bement Center Camp in Charlton, Massachusetts, the day that Richard Nixon resigned. I remember thinking that my best friend Annie Kolak would be thrilled. I was just relieved that there would be no more Watergate hearings, which Annie forced me to watch after school.

That was a long time ago.

Many things are now ‘a long time ago’ in my life. I am truly OK with that. I’m also OK with my daughter Lucy talking like dinosaurs walked the Earth when I was young. I think the most surprising thing to her is how little technology there was in the lives of her parents when we were young. We were discussing old TV shows the other night and I mentioned that we used to sneak into my brother’s room to try and watch “Laugh-In.” I don’t know what surprised her more: my husband asking, “Two televisions? Were y’all rich?” or that having two televisions way back then was a sign of wealth.

Two TVs a sign of wealth?

I am old.

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