Getting older happens gradually. In fact, as I once told the owner of a convenience store that was about a block away from the house where I lived at the time, "I was old enough to buy cigarettes two months ago, when you first checked my ID. I was old enough to buy cigarettes two weeks ago, when you checked it again for about the thirtieth time. I was old enough to buy cigarettes two days ago, when your tally was up to somewhere around forty. And today, I am still old enough to buy cigarettes. You know why? Because I get a little older every single day. I will never, ever walk into your store and suddenly be too young to buy a pack of Marlboro Lights."

So, yes, getting older happens gradually. But feeling older happens in little jolts. Maybe you turn on the radio and wonder what possesses people to listen to the crap you hear coming out of your speakers. Maybe you and your husband are loading your labrador retrievers into the station wagon and you realize, holy cow, my husband and I are loading our labrador retrievers into our station wagon. Maybe you laugh ruefully as you reflect on the fact that these days, when you make an expression, your face kind of does stick that way: you've got the wrinkles to prove it.

Or maybe you're clicking around on the Internet, and you come across a post in a Tim Burton community in which a 15 year-old girl describes The Nightmare Before Christmas as her "favorite childhood movie."

Little jolts.