Periods and feeling OLD!

First, I refer y'all to this excellent, excellent, excellent rant about the indignities of menstruation. (I still think living with a woman who is also menstruating is worse than unsympathetic male consorts.) (But not by much).

Then let me tell you what I just told the Sweet Potato Queens' Message Board of Love.

I'm 31, my kid brother Dorkfish's 23, and my SIL Mrs. Dorkfish is 19, so there's your context.

Dorkfish and I are talking about new CDs we got, we want, etc. One of those is Sinead O'Connor's Collaborations, which we've both played way too much. (I'm actually in the mood for some hard-core hip-hop now, maybe some Cannibal Ox or Aesop Rock.)

So Mrs. Dorkfish cuts in and says, and I quote, "I like her first two CDs, you know, the one with 'Nothing Compares 2 U' and the Lion one? They're, like, classics."

Excuse the hell out of me?! She goes on. "Yeah, classics!" She goes on further to call Nirvana's Nevermind and the Cure's Disintegration "classics". She meant that they were "really good old CDs."

Okay, I know they're not current. I'm listening to current music myself--Cowboy Troy, Mos Def, Ciara, Missy Elliott, Big and Rich. But since when the hell are the CDs that I, again at *thirty-one*, got through high school with "classics"?!?!

Damn, I feel old. I'm just grateful that she's several states away from me and there's a place where I'm still considered "larva." Is there a sub-category for 19-year-old larva, too, maybe "slappable little heifers"?

I close with a few lines from Sinead herself, on the Lion one, who may have known what she was talking about when she was a not-so-sweet young thang in 1987:

"Young woman with a drink in her hand
She like to listen to rock and roll
She moves with the music
`Cause it never gets old
It's the only thing
That never gets old"