Generation X is officially old

And so (almost) am I

Generation X is officially old. The senior members of the cohort born between 1965 and 1980 are turning 60 this year, which the United Nations considers to be old age.

In the montage above, Charlie Sheen is 59, Will Smith 56, Mariah Carey 56 and Julia Roberts is 57. Julia Roberts! She’s three years away from a 10 percent discount at Banana Republic and can already claim free coffee at Burger King.

Since I turned 59 last week, this is of more than passing interest, if not necessarily a cause of acute angst. Until now, growing old and dying have been abstract notions that happen to other people. But there are reminders that time is jealous of us every day.

It didn’t seem so long ago that the Oldies radio stations that you picked up on the AM dial were crackling out ‘50s hits like Bobby Vinton’s Blue Velvet or Frankie Avalon’s Venus.

Now nostalgia radio is playing Bruce Springsteen’s Hungry Heart or AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long - songs I loved in high school. The ‘80s are the new ‘50s.

I wasn’t even aware I missed early 1980s music until I chanced upon a Spotify playlist - top hits of 1982.

Frankly, that year was a time of high anxiety as one of Thatcher’s gangly, 15-year-old children.

Fear lurked in every headline - the prospect of being conscripted to fight in the Falklands. Or of being vapourized in a nuclear war before losing my virginity. Or of not being vapourized, losing my virginity and catching AIDS.

Yet, listening to the sounds of ‘82, all the burdens of youth fell away and all I remembered was the joy and exuberance, defined in banger after banger - Dexy’s Come on Eileen, Rush’s Subdivisions, The Jam’s Beat Surrender and Yazoo’s Only You.

I was a tourist in my own youth. These days, I forget where I put my phone five times a day but I remember every word of those songs from more than 40 years ago.

World events were absorbed at an atmospheric level, as I was brushed at a distance by affairs between the Winter of Discontent in 1979 and the fall of the Berlin Wall 10 years later. But I remember it all vividly.

Time does not move evenly. Life took place in slow motion in the 1980s, images recorded mentally in high definition.

But then existence shifted into fast forward and 35 blurry years later, I’m on the cusp of being old.

Not real old age, with its joint problems, mobility issues and memory loss. But 60 is a milestone in the transition from middle age to the looming end of life expectancy.

It stretches credulity that the MTV generation - subjected to free-range parenting as the original latchkey kids, and lambasted for being aimless slackers - will soon overtake the fading Boomers as the largest and greyest cohort in most Western societies.

The main topic of conversation on my What’s App group of Scottish Gen Xers - aside from complaints about immigration - is retirement. Most are content, aware that work is almost done and that they are seen as barriers to career progression by younger colleagues. Most retain some form of active engagement in the future that keeps them healthy - I have young kids that ensure I will be still qualifying for child benefits when I start collecting my pension. Age doesn’t mean a thing in our online world - the essence of these men is the same as it was 40 years ago.

But we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, stuck in the ‘80s. Days when we were kings, or at least princes: when, as Come on Eileen has it, we were “far too young and clever” to be resigned to our fate of growing old.

Toora, loora, toora, loo-rye-aye. They say the passage of time teaches all things. But I’m still none the wiser about what the hell that means.