Who invited us?

Somewhere between my leather pants and my Lululemon shorts, I think I became old. I’m not sure when, exactly, the transformation took place. I’m pretty sure it was after I got married, because I think I still wore leather pants up until that point. In fact, I did a lot of stuff until a few years ago that, looking back, clearly fit into my “youth” phase: chief among these was skipping dinner before a night of drinking with friends, only to head out for late-night pizza at 2 am. Sadly, I can’t remember the last time I indulged in middle-of-the-night pizza because, frankly, I am home asleep in my bed in the middle of the night. Every night.

My age was brought into sharp relief last night at Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball concert at MSG. Zdenek and I headed down there after watching our pre-recorded Stage 3 of Le Tour. (This has been the most exciting three days of cycling I’ve seen in a long time, and, happily, my man is now back in the maillot jaune. This seemed like a worthy reason to post another photo of him looking resplendent in yellow.) We arrived just a few minutes before Gaga took the stage at 9 pm. The concert was quite the spectacle, and we did enjoy ourselves, but it soon became painfully obvious that we were a bit out of our element. Some of the concert goers were dressed like Gaga herself -- the woman behind me had stripped right down to her bra -- while I looked sporty in Lululemon shorts, a tank top, and flip flops (it was, after all, stiflingly hot). Everyone around us sucked back $8 beers throughout the show, whereas Zdenek and I had to chug back our $1.50 bottle of water before being allowed to enter the stadium. We stood most of the time in order to see the stage, but not necessarily because the music forced us up and out of our seats. And while we did sort of move around in rhythm to the beat, we also had our hands in our pockets a lot of the time. And at some point, with teenage girls screaming around us, the smell of pot wafting through the air, and a couple a few rows down “performing” in their seats, Zdenek turned to me and asked, “Who invited us to the Monster Ball?”

But even though I recognize that I’ve become an old, boring, thirty-something, I guess I don’t mind so much. I really do enjoy getting out of bed before 6 am seven days of the week in order to bike or run. I know that we’ve actually lost certain friends in New York because we prefer to be at home and in bed no later than midnight (and even that’s pushing it), whereas most of the New York crowd only gets going at around 11 pm. I don’t feel funny wearing flip flops and shorts to a concert because, frankly, I’ve done the leather pants thing, and it’s just not as comfortable. (In fact, I wore a 4-1/2 inch pair of heels to a wedding on Saturday, and though they looked great, by 9 pm I was cursing every time I had to get out of my seat to make a trip to the bathroom.) Yes, age has taught me that my feet feel best in runners or clipped into bike pedals; that oatmeal, not pizza, is the ultimate early-morning food; and that it is more enjoyable to run a few miles before the crack of dawn than to stumble out of bed to down a few Advils for a pounding hangover. We may not fit it at the Monster Ball these days, but somehow, that seems okay.