What tells you that you are absolutely, undeniably, getting older way too fast?

We all have these moments. You’re minding your own business, living as usual, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, something happens. You see something a different way, maybe something you see often but all of a sudden, it looks different. Or you have a normal experience, nothing out of the ordinary, and something just clicks in your brain and it hits you like a ton of bricks.

Tonight I was watching TV, trying to sleep, when I saw a commercial for a new movie with Robert DeNiro, and he was playing a grandfather, and he looked like a grandfather. Right after the commercial, Conan O’Brien came back from the commercial break, and Al Gore was a guest, and he was so grey.

Normal, everyday things you wouldn’t think twice about, but it’s as if someone turned a radio dial a hair to the right and all of a sudden, the station is coming in perfectly clear, and you realize that time is passing much too quickly.