It's always upsetting when you realize a lot of people are younger than you are. Really, everyone no longer in elementary, junior high, or high school should be older than I am. There are certain kinds of people, though, whose youthfulness is especially egregious.
1) Doctors
Doctors should not be younger than I am. Doctors, from what I know of them from 1990s television, spend approximately 25 years in school, and then an additional 56 years as residents. They spend years and years falling in love with one another, having sex in closets, developing tragic friendships with people who are dying, and fighting off knife-wielding attackers in the emergency room before they become actual doctors. So the fact that every specialist I see looks at me appraisingly from eyes that never appraised the 1980s is upsetting and wrong and generally unacceptable.
2) Newscasters
Newscasters should not be younger than I am. Sure, the ones who look a little bit like high-class prostitutes or rich men's mistresses - they can be youthful (in that soon-to-overripe kind of way). But the ones who've cut their call-girl hair and developed those immovable hair hats should not be younger than I am. They are supposed to give the impression of gravely delivering grave news they don't fully understand because they're newscasters, not journalists, god dammit, and they're supposed to do so using lips that existed prior to the year 1990.
3) Mothers in telephone/internet provider commercials
Actresses playing mothers in telephone/ internet provider commercials should not be younger than I am. You know the ones I mean - they're often ethically ambiguous, not actively attractive, but not noticeably unattractive, and they are enviable because they are lucky enough to have husbands who don't know how to use the television remote and children who have attitudes and inappropriate boyfriends. They look both despairing ("That's a remote, you darling, hapless man!") and smug ("I have a husband, children and a television, you darling, hapless spinster!"), and as of a couple of years ago, they started looking about ten years younger than I am.
Thank God I'm not a successful professional or a contented family woman, or I'd be surrounded by such upstarts all the time.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
One of the great and unavoidable truths of life is that we have no idea what’s going on in another person’s head, not even if they tell us.
I recommend the following exercise for the would-be Catastrophizer, the Catastrophyte, if you will: during a conversation, wait for a brief pause and then ask your talking partner what he or she is thinking about. He or she might say: “I was considering carefully what you just said about representative democracy” or “I was unable to stop focusing on how the colour of that shirt makes your eyes pop.” What you must learn to do is understand that those responses are almost certainly lies. What your partner was actually thinking was probably along the lines of: “I can’t think of a topic more murderously boring than representative democracy, or a person more selfishly tedious” or “How that shirt makes his or her eyes bulge as though he or she is being strangled. How I wish that were happening now.”
Once you’ve accepted that behind the smile or deeply thoughtful expression on your companion’s face lies a hidden world of criticisms, you are ready to progress to the next level of conversational catastrophizing. The Catastrophizer-in-training must become a master of projected interpersonal judgements and disappointments. Before you speak, imagine the internal negative response your companion will have to your comment; then try to imagine the next comment you will make in response to your companion’s silent and concealed condemnation; repeat.
It should go something like this:
Catastrophyte: Canadian television is laughably amateurish.
Catastrophyte’s inner monologue: Oh God - I remember possibly having heard something about how my conversational partner has occasionally enjoyed watching the Royal Canadian Air Farce.
Catastrophyte: Well, I mean SOME Canadian television is somewhat lacking in terms of quality.
Catastrophyte’s inner monologue: Oh God - I remember possibly having heard that my companion’s romantic partner is an actor and was once punched in the face by Eric Peterson. Did I sound too laudatory?
Catastrophyte: Especially Eric Peterson. Does he have to be in every Canadian show? Or am I wrong? Are there just five different male Canadian actors who look very much like Eric Peterson?
Catastrophyte’s inner monologue: Oh God - doesn’t his/her partner look like Eric Peterson?
Catastrophyte: Although Eric Peterson is incredibly sexy. I mean, I think about having sex with him ALL THE TIME.
At this point, the Castrophyte should become so dizzied and terrified by the unavoidable misunderstandings that occur every time two people speak that he/she will fall into a brooding silence and internally vow that in the future he/she will speak only to people so lonely that any criticisms will be tempered by gratitude.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.