I’m older than Mrs. Robinson!!

While reading Wired this morning at breakfast, there was a photo for Marriott (EXPERIENCE the world of MARRIOTT!)  with 40-somethings laughing and using an IPad to show how hip and ‘Now’ they are while enjoying glasses of red wine.  Two gentlemen – one with a greying, well-groomed beard and another with trendy glasses + a woman, I’m guessing early 40s – looks kinda like Robin Wright in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  And I thought:  GOOD GOD!  THAT’S MY DEMOGRAPHIC!!! THIS AD IS AIMED AT ME!!!!  I am THAT old now.

Think back to when your parents would have cocktail parties – remember those?  When you would stay up, maybe sneak to the first landing on the staircase to listen in?  They’d be all dressed up…  smoke and drunken laughter would fill the living room?  Remember that?   Remember how OLD they seemed?  Well, more than likely, they were only in their 30s.

Then I got to thinking about Cary Grant.  Who, even now, when I re-watch Notorious, is the most mature and debonair man on the planet.  He has always seemed so much older and world-wise than I could ever hope to be in my lifetime.  He was only 43 years old when he made Notorious. That’s a year younger than I am now.  Which means that I’m older than Cary Grant.  This makes me ache with such a sense of defeat, because there’s just no way that I can compete.  I can’t ever be that together, that deep that grounded.   I can’t ever move the way he did.  I’ll never be that graceful!  He moved like a freaking cat.  And yes, I know he’s a dude, but let’s say there was a classic female actress in her 40s – which is laughable  because it just didn’t happen then.  I mean think about it.  Maybe Bette Davis in All About Eve – she was cast as a ‘fading’ star at the ripe old age of 42.  Actresses of a certain age just didn’t get screen time then.  If you were over 40 you were relegated to the crazy roles, the mother roles, the spinster roles or the over-the-hill rolls.  And you know something?  Anne Bancroft when she starred in The Graduate was only 36 years old!!!  I’m older than Mrs. Robinson!  HOLY CRAP!  And what’s worse?  Most kids don’t even know who the hell she is!

Oh look!  There’s Dustin Hoffman at the window of the nave!  Whatever is HE doing there? If only I’d had my own leopard hat and coat!

“Let me be your Mrs. Robinson.”
“Who?”
“Seriously?  You don’t know who Mrs. Robinson is?  What about Simon & Garfunkle?  Have you heard of them?  OH GOOD GOD!  How ’bout this?  We’ll skip any sort of inappropriate sexual come on… Let me be your teacher of iconic cultural moments?”
“I could be down with that.”

OY.