Sometime this month the 300 millionth person will be born in the United States.
You know what this means.
It means there's going to be one more young person in a country that already seems to be overrun by young people.
I don't know when the whole world became so young. I can remember when I was young. Back then, the whole world looked pretty old.
But now, everywhere I go I see young people.
And they're getting younger and younger. People in college, people starting off in business, new parents. Every year they all look younger and younger to me.This all really hit home the other day when my DePauw University alumni magazine arrived. I was a student at DePauw in 1967 when the 200 millionth person was born in this country.
This issue of the magazine had photos from the alumni reunions of last spring. And I was impressed as I looked through pages.
There was a photo of the class of 1986 celebrating their 20th reunion. They looked good. You'd figure that. They're just 40-somethings.
The class of 1981 also looked great after 25 years. And so did the classes of 1976 and 1971. There was a large group from the class of 1966 and they looked great. So did the class of 1961. And the 50th reunion class of 1956 looked like they were in the prime of life.
I can remember when I was a student at DePauw and alumni came back for their 50th reunion. They looked so old I figured they had to be 110. But here in my DePauw magazine were photos of reunion classes from 1951, 1946 and 1941. And I thought they all looked great.
I pointed this out to my wife.
Me: "Look at these people. These people are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s and they still look fairly young. What is happening here? First, more and more people started to look young to me. Then, all these young people started to look even younger. And now it's finally happened. Now even older people are starting to look younger to me."
Wife: "Everything is relative. This just means you're getting older. When someone 85 looks at you, they think you look pretty young. When someone 25 looks at you, they think you're getting on in years."
But I don't want to get older. I want to look younger.
I can think of only one way to deal with this.
At my next college reunion, I'm going to hang out with the class of 1935!
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