Apparently, I’m the old guy now

Apparently, I’m the old guy now

“The beauty of collaboration between older and younger generations is that we combine strength with wisdom.” — Author Brett Harris (1998-)

I’ve recently observed that most of my co-workers are young enough to be my children.

This realization arrived without warning and, frankly, without the courtesy of first asking whether I was prepared to become an elder statesman.

I am not, although I’m beginning to resemble Ben Franklin after No-Shave November.

In my own mind, I remain approximately 38.

My birth certificate, knees and the young people at work have apparently formed a committee to dispute this.

I work in professional hockey, which probably skews the demographics. Sports organizations tend to attract energetic young people who can work a 12-hour game day, go out afterward and apparently remain functional the following morning.

I can still work the 12-hour game day, but afterward I want ibuprofen and a recliner.

At 61, I’m the second-oldest person on staff. The oldest has me by only two years, and many of my colleagues are younger than my actual children, who are 30 and 26. That seems unnecessarily aggressive.

The age difference doesn’t normally occur to me while we’re working.

We’re all dealing with the same ticketing system, answering the same phones, attending the same meetings and trying to solve whatever peculiar little crisis has wandered through the door that afternoon.

Then someone will casually mention being born in 2001.

I was 36 in 2001.

I had a mortgage.

I had children.

I had opinions about lawn care.

There should be a warning before someone tells you something like that.

Working with younger people also provides regular reminders that objects and experiences I consider perfectly ordinary have become historical artifacts.

I remember telephones attached to walls.

Not only were they attached to walls, but if you wanted “privacy” while talking on one, you stretched the cord around a corner and hoped nobody walked through it.

I remember television before remote controls became standard equipment. Changing the channel occasionally required sending a child across the room, which may have been the first wireless remote.

I remember when there were three major television networks and somehow we still complained that there was nothing on.

I remember writing checks for groceries at the A&P.

I remember road maps.

Actual maps.

Enormous pieces of paper designed so that once unfolded in a moving automobile they could never again be returned to their original dimensions.

I remember a wisecracking, Brooklyn-accented puppet named Albert the Alley Cat appearing on the 6 and 10 p.m. news to deliver weather “sadistics,” including Milwaukee’s “humidery.”

I remember phone booths.

I remember pay phones.

I remember calling home collect and attempting to convey an entire message in the space where you were supposed to say your name.

“Will-you-accept-a-collect-call-from-Dad-pick-me-up-at-nine?”

Before music became something downloaded or streamed, I bought it on physical media — compact discs, records, cassette tapes and eight-track cartridges. I also remember Columbia House, which taught an entire generation that nothing costing one penny actually costs one penny.

My basement man cave is a working museum of obsolete media technology, much to the delight of my Gen Z son, who has discovered the singular joys of vinyl LPs.

The really disturbing part is that none of this feels particularly ancient to me.

In my mind’s eye, the 1970s were roughly 17 minutes ago. The calendar insists they were nearly half a century ago.

Which brings us to Earth, Wind & Fire.

At a sales training session about a month ago, the presenter played “September” when we returned from lunch.

Now, there are songs one hears.

There are songs one appreciates.

And then there are songs for which remaining seated constitutes a violation of the natural order.

“September” falls into the third category.

So I danced.

Unapologetically.

I did the moves. I committed to the enterprise. I was, as near as I could determine, the only attendee in the room who had decided that if Earth, Wind & Fire was going to provide the soundtrack, somebody ought to provide the choreography.

Maurice White would have been proud.

Our training leader, Murray, who occupies approximately the same Gen X-to-Boomer neighborhood I do, was intensely delighted at this turn of events.

The Gen Zers and Millennials in attendance offered a somewhat broader range of critical reviews.

Some laughed.

Some appeared entertained.

Some looked at me with that peculiar mixture of fascination and concern normally associated with discovering that Dad has wandered onto the dance floor at a wedding.

I remained unmoved.

Well, metaphorically unmoved.

Physically, I was extremely moved.

Because if somebody asks whether you remember the 21st night of September, there is only one proper response.

You remember.

Preferably with choreography.

There are advantages, however, to becoming the old guy at work.

You acquire institutional qualities simply by having been alive longer.

Someone mentions a movie, and you’ve seen it.

Someone mentions an old restaurant, and you’ve eaten there.

Someone finds an ancient piece of office equipment, and you know what it does.

This produces a dangerous illusion among younger co-workers that you possess wisdom.

I try not to discourage it.

Occasionally, I even have some.

That’s another thing I’ve discovered about working with people much younger than I am.

I like it.

They keep me from becoming entirely fossilized.

They know things I don’t. I know things they don’t. Occasionally we can trade.

I can explain why people once needed a Sears catalog.

They can explain whatever happened to the button I accidentally removed from my smartphone.

It’s an intergenerational barter system.

And while we joke about generational differences, most of them disappear remarkably quickly when there’s actual work to be done.

A season ticket member doesn’t particularly care whether the person solving their problem is 24 or 61.

Neither does a deadline.

Neither does a hockey game.

When the doors open and thousands of people start coming into the arena, everybody has a job to do.

You do yours.

And that’s when I sometimes forget the age difference entirely.

Until somebody says something like, “My mom loves that band.”

It’s invariably a band I once saw in concert at Summerfest or the Wisconsin State Fair or watched on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on Saturday mornings.

There was a time, of course, when I was the young guy at work.

I was the one learning from people who seemed impossibly old.

They knew how the place worked.

They knew whom to call.

They knew which rules mattered, which ones didn’t and where somebody had hidden the extra snack stash.

Then, without my noticing, the cast changed.

The older people retired.

Some died.

New people arrived.

And somewhere along the way I moved from one side of the equation to the other.

Nobody held a ceremony.

Nobody presented me with a commemorative Uecker-ish cardigan.

I simply looked around one day and realized I was working alongside people who could plausibly call me Dad.

That’s not entirely a bad place to be.

At this end of a working career, you begin to understand something that wasn’t obvious at the beginning.

Work isn’t only about the work.

It’s also about the people you encounter while doing it.

Some teach you when you’re young.

Some walk beside you for years.

And eventually, if you’re lucky, you get the chance to be the older person who knows where a few things are kept.

Maybe you answer a question.

Maybe you tell a story.

Maybe you offer advice.

Maybe, if you’re particularly wise, you know when not to offer advice.

Then everybody gets back to work.

I’m still not entirely comfortable being the old guy.

But I’m warming to it.

Besides, somebody around the office needs to remember how to fold a road map.

And if “September” comes on while we’re doing it, somebody needs to dance.

Apparently I’m qualified for both.

Vilas County News-Review freelance columnist Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.