No Sir, I can’t Boogie!

What a horrible feeling - realizing you are getting old. It is Tuesday as I’m writing this and I still haven’t quite recovered from the weekend.

I suppose I only have myself to blame. I had an old friend visiting me, which is always a pretty good guarantee that the weekend will be spent very, very drunk. And this weekend was no exception. I suppose it’s always like that when old friends meet after not being in touch for a long time. You need a few drinks to break the ice and remind yourself why you were friends in the first place. And before long you’re all relaxed and chatting just like old times – the only difference being that now you are actually talking about the old times.

Now, there is nothing wrong with talking about your past with old friends. But this time we decided to take it a step further: We made a conscious decision to visit our past, and to relive the joys of being young and wild. To achieve this we abandoned the nice, quiet pub where we normally stay all night and headed to the disco (are they still called that?) where we used to spend most of our weekends ten years ago. This, of course, was a mistake of colossal proportions.

There is always something strange about walking into a room when you can tell that most people there had not yet been conceived by the time you passed your driving test. I wonder if teachers ever get used to that? Maybe that’s why you could sometimes see a brief look of horror on their faces when they entered the class room? Or was that just common sense? But then again, how much common sense can you have if you choose a career that keeps you in confined spaces with juveniles for the best part of any given day?

Anyway, there we were in the disco, instantly feeling like relics among the young and beautiful. H&M catalogues on legs was what my friend called them (I’m too intimidated by them to shop in H&M so I had to take his word for it). More troubling than feeling like an outsider was realizing that these kids were exactly like we used to be: young, happy, and in various states of intoxication. In fact, they were so like us that we were able to spot old friends we used to come here with: the drunk, the womanizer, the couple kissing in front of the toilets and blocking the way for the people in need, they were all there, only younger.

In our drunken state we agreed all this to be an existential problem too far from our reach, so we headed for the dance floor instead. That’s where another painful memory hit me: the feeling when you are drunk enough to want to dance but not drunk enough to ignore your inability to move your body to the music or look like you’re relaxed and having a good time. And now there’s the added misery of feeling old. Meanwhile everyone around you seems to know exactly what to do, and you just can’t help wondering how stupid you must look like to all those people standing there watching.

After enough humiliation – and far too much alcohol – we finally decided to call it a day. And what did we learn from all this? Well, we will be doing everything in our power to stop time travel ever becoming reality. But since there’s very little we can do about it, and the chances of it actually working are pretty slim, I guess we can just sit back and moan in peace.