New Age Ageist

For the past 5 years at my good government job I have noticed that I am usually the youngest person in the room (I'm also usually the only person of color-but that's a post for another day). Most of us know that this can be either a gift or a gift horse. Youth excuses ignorance, explains impatience and breeds innovation. That’s the gift. Youth also allows people to ignore you and assume that you don’t know nothing about nothing. We have all been the youngest person in the room but gradually this changes.

At my job I have had many a manager say that they are eager to hear the ideas of the newer younger workers only to default to doing things how they always have done them. Mix this with a manager telling my coworker that she hadn’t paid her dues to deserve a promotion. Yet in within the past five years this woman has been promoted and has taken this same manager’s job! Today, a great debate in my department is how we should present the materials for a training session we are having next month. A coworker who is a few years older than I suggested that we give the participants their materials on a USB flash drive. This is a great idea, especially since most of the participants are flying to participate. The older folks in group hemmed and hawed about flash drives. They wanted them to have large three ring binders, so they could have a hard copy of the material and could turn the pages along with the presenter. Huh?! Is it not 2010? Aren't the airlines shaking us down for everything we bring onto their planes? Can we get with the going green/everything is electronic now program? It can be frustrating dealing with people who were alive in the 1940s!

Sometimes you just want the old folks to sit down somewhere so we can more forward…

Then I read on Yahoo news that they are already trying to come up with a name for the next generation. The ones who have always had mobile devices, the internet and only one white president prior to Mr. Obama. As I read on I realized that at some point this no name generation will be in the workforce with me; being innovative and young-and probably wondering when this lady who was alive in the 1980s will go sit down somewhere. And this realization got me to thinking about the aging process. I mean it is inevitable of course, but how does one go about doing it realistically and gracefully? Even now I have to remind myself that by all appearances I am a responsible adult-and though I long for the ease and breeze of childhood those days are over.

I wonder if anyone ever really reconciles this fact. Do 80 year-olds in fact feel like they are 80? I’m sure their physical ailments clue them in, but what about mentally? In my younger days I believed that 30 looked and felt a certain way. Don’t ask me what that was is, because as I near 30 I can’t imagine it feeling any different than how I feel now-yet and still I know that how I feel now is not what I ever imagined. Make sense? Maybe only to me. But these are the things I think about when I see people who are eligible to retire still roaming the halls of my office. Maybe they don't see themselves as old or even as being progress blockers. And what about my 59 year old coworker carrying around a picture from her youth and planning to undergo risky plastic surgery to look better…and feel better about herself. Why should she feel bad about getting older? Yet at the same time I want these older people to get out the way so the younger, more intuned young people can run things! Then I pause and think about how one day it could be me who is standing in the way. Holding on to the past and thinking these young kids don’t know nothing about nothing.

See You In Seven

Middle School Musical

Waaaaaay back in 2004, my cousin and I were cruising back to DC from New Jersey when the radio DJ announce that they were going to play the old school jam of the day. Now normally when it comes to the Old School portion of a disc jockey's mix mastering I would turn the station. No disrespect to the true hippity hop fans out there, but I ain't never trying to hear the good Rev Run, before he got saved, singing about shoes! So please imagine my shock and shagrin when we heard Snoop Doggy Dog's Gin and Juice.







Saaaay Whaaaat? Remember that ya'll?! When did a song that was part of my childhood soundtrack become old school?! I mean I remember being in my room with headphones plugged into my radio so my parents couldn't hear me listening to some dude from some place called Long Beach California singing about smoking and drinking! How dare that DJ call this song that introduced surban America to the wonderfulness that became gansta rap!



Old school? Yeah right! But now that we have the Death of Autotunes and the likes of Lil Wayne helping to raise and maintain the South once again I long for that music from the middle. Now anyone who knows me knows that my true muscial love lie back in the day with the grown folks music, like the Stylisitics, the Delfonics, Ojays and of course the elements. But when I want to act my age and not like my parents I need that early to mid ninties music!



I need Biggie and Junior Mafia!


Before Puffy (or whatever he's calling himself these days) fell in love with suits that shone!

I need Nas before his beef with J when he was still Illmatic!

Lauryn pre craziness (check Rum's post from January 30th)





She can either be with the Fugees or doing her solo thang!


And what ever happened to Total? SWV?

And I'm not gonna lie, Brandy was like one of my favorites before her hairline started to scare me!

The Lost Boys with the Lex, Coupe, Bemmas and the Benz!

Tupac!





Do I need to say more?

Oh how I could go on and on about how great the music was back then. Not quite old school. But much better than most of the stuff that's out today! I am a girl from the middle school! Where we wore flannel shirts, white tank tops with baggy jeans, where were started get classy and buying Louis Bags. Oh, I missed the middle school, there the music was juuuust right!

See You In Seven

Gone But Not Forgotten

When I was a young Amaretto I swear I had a good memory. Actually, if I recall correctly it was one of the best! Once something got in my head it stayed and took up residence. Never was I one to claim that I had a photographic memory, but I was never a child who forgot her homework. Never was I a child so out of it that I needed my name and address pinned to my coat. So it’s a little unsettling to me, as I become older and wiser that here lately I am forgetting things. And I am not talking oh I forgot to water the plants, or how old Great Aunt Susie will be this year. I’m talking about I am suppose to be someplace at a certain time and there isn’t so much as a nagging feeling that I’m suppose to be doing something... I’m just sitting sipping my sweet tea watching Maury tell another baby daddy…that he in fact is not the father! Does anyone else wonder if folks are going to celebrate Father’s Day in 2020? I'm thinking no. Is it just me?

Hmmmm. What was I writing about? Oh, yeah.

So Rum Punch has long since sworn by her planning calendar. Since I am just getting on the camera phone craze (like as of March ‘08), I have yet to utilize the wonderfulness that are the schedulers that come with the phone. Nor do I see myself carrying around these…though my mom swears by them. I am a single lady with no kids, so what do I need a planner for? There are no music lessons or swim practices I have to get the little ones to after a day at work. I mean straight up, all I am doing right now is hanging out and working. And yet people say “Remember yesterday when…” and well all I can do is stare blankly, because I don’t remember it…at all.

Forgetfulness is just one of the more annoying things about getting older. You come to expect the reduce energy, the gray hairs found in unmentionable places, the “miss” that becomes “ma’am”. But when you really have to think about what you wore to work last week in hopes not to wear the same outfit…there’s a problem. When as a child your favorite game was Memory and you can’t remember where you parked the car, what year it is, or who the President is, there is cause for concern. Not saying that all these things have happened to me-I am here to entertain, but this type of shyt happens like everyday...so some people. I definitely know a Black man is President, and his name ain't Jesse Jackson....right?

It seems that as more stuff goes into my head, so of that other stuff is falling out. I guess that’s just part of the process of getting older. I might just have to eat more fish, tie a string on my finger and start using a planner if I want to remember what is it is exactly that I am suppose to be doing…

See You In Seven

Yes, Women of Color Do Age Well

Excuse me ladies, I need visit the restroom.

Oh I'll come with...

Me too.

You know I don't like going to the restroom anymore,

can't stand looking in the mirror...

I hear you.

What?!

I can't see how old I am getting in my face.

You kidding me right?

Oh be quiet...you are going to look 45 when you are 90!

Never really thought about it before but yes, women of color do age well. Maybe now that I am approaching that age where I don't look like a teen anymore and my friends of other races are seeing the signs of age creep up on their faces...I starting to take notice.

While I was on vacation, a lady I swear was in her late forties turned out to be in her early seventies with grandkids older than me. Reading the latest issue of Essence article on Valerie Jarrett, she is 52...get out of here!

Then I am sorry, this last one took the cake for me...Michelle O pics at her highschool prom. WOW!

I hope to age like this!

Much luv until next week...peace:)

A Senior Moment

Last night I had one of those Am I old? moments. And while I can't say that these moments happen all the time, but there was a time in my recent memory when they didn't happen at all. The first time I pondered this was a few years ago when my cousin and I were on our way back from New Jersey. We were chatting, laughing and singing along to the radio when the DJ played Snoop Doggy Dog's Gin and Juice as the old school jam of the day. Saaaaaaaaaay What? Old school jams belonged to Grand Master Flash and Run DMC. NOT Snoop Dogg-the artist whose Doggystyle album had everyone saying "bow wow wow yippie yo yippie yay"! I mean we are talking about Snoop-you don't love me you just love my doggy style-Dogg is suddenly old school?

So last night, I'm wandering around Wally World when I overhear the following conversation between two young ladies.
Youngin' Number 1: I got the Legally Blonde DVD. I love that movie!
Youngin' Number 2: Oh yeah! I like it too. It's funny.
YN1: You know what movie I watched for the first time the other night? Cruel Intentions.
YN2: What? Cruel Intentions? I've never heard of it.
YN1: Yeah, it's this old movie with Reese Witherspoon in it...
Amaretto: (Nearly faints at YN1 usage of the world old for a movie that came out in the late 90's. Has to concentrate on not hitting wide bodied mothers and their brood of children while lost in her shock. Cruel Intentions is now old and should be on the Turner Classic Movie Channel like Casablanca or something!)
YN1:...it was good though. You should watch it sometime.
YN2: Cool.

After the shock of it all wears off of me, these type of moments become funny. No one tells us how to respond to aging. Or what we should do when we realize we are no longer the youngest person in a room. Within my circle of friends we often talk of our aching muscles, first strand of gray hair and all the things we just can't do no mo! I know my mom was amused as I lamented that I could now round my age up to 30 after I passed the 25 year old mark a few years ago. She had to calmly but repeatedly tell me that you don't round up ages. So while age ain't nothing but a number, I shouldn't round it up. Okay, I'm trying to remember that. And I shouldn't freak out that I'm now lumped into the same demographic box as 35 year olds.

But as another year approaches, and everyone I know is getting older, I know more of these Am I old? moments are sure to occur. And while I know that I am still young and fly, I have to remind myself that my childhood isn't as recent as I tend to remember it. I can group some of my friendships in decades now, which is amazing to me! But it's all good, and it's all a blessing, though sometimes its disguised and I have to look for it. Yet, as 2008 closes, I can truly say that I'm excited about what's going to happen next in the life and times of Amaretto Jenkins!

I hope you all have a save and Happy New Year! And just know, that somewhere tomorrow, I'm going to be partying like it's 1999...again!


See You In Seven

Going in Circles

Before we get started with the post, I have to share something with y’all. Apparently someone has taught my 82 year old grandmother about the joy and magic that is google. I don't know if she learned it while watching her daily dose of CNN, MSBNC and FOX news or if she has somehow heard this but now whenever she asks me a question about what happened to some famous person she has lost “contact” with, and I respond, "I don't know grandma." She says in her thick Southern drawl, "don't worry, you can google it for me." Lawd! Who has been teaching my grandmama new things?

Alright on to the post…

So one of my biggest fears is that I'm gonna be one of those old ladies you see in the grocery store, with her zipper three quarters of the way up her dress, her dingy beige bra (did it use to be white) exposed, looking like she tried with all her might to get it all the way zipped up and then said, "f-it, I got to make it to the store for the Senior Citizen Discount".

I mean if you're a young single woman who has lived alone, you know how hard it is to get the zipper up by yourself. You gotta bring it up a little ways with one hand, then reach your other hand over your shoulder to bring it up some more, then use the other hand to bring it up some, rinse and repeat until you get to the top. But imagine being a little old lady with no one to help you. Oh stick to buttons! And even then there's that whole misbuttoning thing that happens and we’ve all seen an old lady walking around with her dress all crooked.

But back to my fear, the fear of aging. I think a lot of people probably wonder what growing older will be like, but living with my parents and grandmother really gives me a visual aid of this whole getting older business. I mean seriously, if you came to the Rum Punch household, we got the Circle of Life thing happening: young, getting old and already old. Well, actually to have a true Circle of Life, we would probably need a child or baby to make it complete, but since Rum Punch ain't birthin no babies any time soon, we are an abridged version of the circle…

Watching my parents get older has been so many words: scary, challenging, fascinating, frightening, eye opening… Where did my father, the strongest man in the world who could lift anything go? Now, he asks me to pick up that heavy box and take it downstairs. What about my mother who was once the Queen of multi tasking? Now, she gets tired so easily and will be like, "I need a nap." We're not even gonna talk about my grandmother and her arthuritis, and how she knows it's gonna rain cause her right knee is hurting.

I really don't think anyone knows how to prepare for aging. We just know that it's coming because (God willing) it's inevitable. I mean some people exercise, eat right, blah, blah, blah so they can have a healthier life, but aging comes nonetheless. Eyes get weaker. Mid sections appear out of nowhere. Skin begins to wrinkle. Certain body parts take that trip down South. We lose agility and dexterity. Sometimes minds become feeble. We are prone to more illnesses. We get weaker, more dependent, and we can't do the things we used to. My mother says things to me like, "when I get older, I don’t want to be this way or that way…I promise I won't be a burden". And I think that is the biggest fear of them all, the wondering what will happen to you when you get older, who will take care of you, who will walk you up and down the stairs, who will take you to the store if you need it, who will help you balance your checkbook, who will make sure you take your medicine, who will hold your hand when your spouse passes after 50 years of marriage, who will take you in when you can no longer live alone. Who will, who will?

We don't have the answers. But I know that we wonder. I know that my mother thinks of how to make me and my brother's lives easier when she and my father get older, how they can prepare now for the inevitable, she wonders who will pass away first and if it's her, she doesn't think that my father will be able to cope. I know that now my grandmother talks more and more about when she goes to glory. And while no one knows the day or the hour, she thinks her time is coming before all of ours. And she seems to be getting ready for it.

So maybe it's not just a fear of aging that I have. Maybe it's having to deal with the reality of watching and then having to accept that my parents are aging. And knowing what that means for me, for my brother, for them, for us. Seeing it day in and day out, taking note of the subtle changes. And knowing that this is only the beginning. Living with the three of them is a constant reminder for me of what life is and is not. Of what it can and may not be. That it can happen so fast. That truly as corny as it sounds, it's about cherishing moments, making memories, finding joy in the seemingly small things. That it is measured in so many more things than what you do, what you make, where you live. It's about learning, loving, growing, changing, teaching, aging and eventually dying. The circle of, well you know the rest...

That's my time y'all! Happy Rum Punch Friday!