I just turned 50. I have an extremely good memory for events long ago, like I remember parts of being 2 years old even without difficulty. This is the first year in my life that all those things seem so very long ago though. I don’t know how to describe it, but the fact I was alive before we got answering machines suddenly makes me feel very ancient when it didn’t before. I also try to describe how horrible 1980s parenting was and nobody really gets that, like how casually you were molested or sexually pestered by adult men and nobody cared, or girls at my high school having adult boyfriends, or my teacher dating Tanya Memme when she was underage, and briefly being suspended for it because it was Catholic school, but she graduated and they went right back to it. (Tanya is a good egg though). It seems very alien to anyone I’ve talked to about it who are younger, but it really was like that, your parents did not give one fuck about your safety. That makes me feel suddenly a lot older, because nobody else seems to understand or have forgotten how bad it was.