You had me at Age Ninja

The internet is a magnificent place

On Mondays in college, we’d go to Sons of Italy around 6. Occasionally in the springtime, that crept back to 3. Sons had a fantastic patio, and Athens would bloom in many ways when the weather warmed up. A classroom was no place for youngsters.

Sons wasn’t fancy; far from it. And the beer wasn’t great. I can’t even remember if it was cold, but the cups were huge and anything short of a sticky note with a smiley face worked for acceptable identification. It’s actually where I received my fake ID in college.

Seems legit

However, the world continues to rotate on its axis and float around the sun, so Mondays are no longer spent on a rickety, wooden deck drinking tall beers and playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon. That same timeframe is full of daycare pickup, play dates, baths, and bedtime routines. It’s all worth it, but it’s just funny to think of old times.

And that’s how I ended up on a website called Age Ninja (I love the internet). You plug in your birthday, and it calculates and shares a bunch of random facts around that day. My half-birthday is coming up. I straddle the line between Generation X and Millennial (I’ve heard some call this Xillenial, but I don’t think fetch is gonna be a thing), and I was today years old when I learned that my Chinese zodiac is Dog.

Of all the stuff on there, the following panel made me the saddest:

I saw “Eye of the Tiger” at first and thought there was hope.

I’m guilty of singing “Jack & Diane” as recently as last summer (great windows-down song), but what’s with the rest of that list? What in the heavenly hell was going on in society that’s reflected in that lineup. I wouldn’t wish that playlist upon a terror suspect being tortured with sleep deprivation.

One month later, the top song was “Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. I guess you could say my arrival turned things around.