3 Signs You Are Still Young

I turn 24 in a couple of months.  I felt old when I turned 23 but 24 seems...even older.  Imagine that.  Most of my roommates and friends got married when they were 20.  Some of them have kids.  A few of them have two children already.  People I used to babysit are now in the singles' ward with me or on missions.  I feel old sometimes.  Before everyone over the age of 25 who may be reading this rolls their eyes and quits reading, let me assure you that I know I'm really not that old.  In fact, a number of things have happened in the last few months to remind me of just how young I am.

1. At the bus stop the other day, I got into a conversation with a total stranger.  We watched a hawk swoop down from a nearby tree limb and pick up some unsuspecting critter on the ground.  Somehow this little observation of the circle of life got us onto the topic of horses.  She lives on a farm out in Oakley and has raised horses since she was a little girl.  Her favorite horse, the one she has had since she was in her 20s, is getting on in years and starting to slow down.  When I asked how old the horse was, she replied that it was 25-years-old.  I don't know much about horses or their average lifespans but I figured that 25 was fairly old for a horse.  "Wow, that's an old horse!  Older than me!"  The lady kind of chuckled and then starting reminiscing about her younger days.  That's when I realized that if you are younger than the oldest horse, you are still young.
2. We had a meeting about health insurance at work about a month and a half ago.  As we sat in the conference room, a projection of all the employees' names and birthdays appeared on the wall.  1955, 1960, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1977...1989.  Yeah, I got quite a few comments about being the baby of the office...and how I wasn't even alive when Reagan was president...and how I am the same age or younger than some of my coworkers' children.  I chose not to bring up the fact that when I make oldies playlists on iTunes or Spotify, Journey songs go in there right alongside the tunes of Simon and Garfunkle and the Beatles.  If your earliest memory is after 1990 (heck, if your earliest memory is after 1980), you are still young.
3. When I turned 23 in Provo, I felt like a dinosaur.  Many of the girls in my ward were four years younger than me and still in their giggly, boy-crazy stage.  When I moved back to California and went to church for the first time, I found that I was in the middle of my ward's age spectrum and actually closer to the bottom than to the top.  When you are rubbing shoulders with people in your singles' ward who graduated from high school seven to ten years before you did, you are still young.

(DISCLAIMER: If your situation does not fit any of the above criteria, that does not mean that you are not young.  It just means you are older than me. :) )