2009. I feel old.

Yikes, another year. This is really freaky, because on some levels I don't feel much older at all.
But I guess I do look older and (maybe) act older. For example, today I went out to dinner with my parents, and I saw a couple who were maybe a little older than my parents sitting at a table near us. I pointed them out to my parents as a very romantic pair.

We ended up leaving at the same time, and the woman was standing in front of the coat rack. She excused herself and moved aside to get my coat. Normally, this would be the end of the story. Except the woman and man made small talk with me about the weather and things like that. Sure, you could chalk my bizarre feelings to those of a girl who's too caught up in the Parisian way, in which la conversation is an art and one does not engage in it for a few seconds with strangers. Yet I prefer to see it as a kind of acknowledgment that I'm on their level... I mean, if I were in high school, they would not have talked to me the same way, right?

EDIT: a day later, re-reading this makes me feel kind of stupid. So what if I can make polite conversation with other people; doing so maybe says more for my sociability skills than anything else. On the other hand, lately I've had this gnawing feeling of getting old... and it's really sad.