So last night we attended our office yearend D&D (dinner & dance) which was a masquerade ball (blog post to follow!). My friends and I left before midnight, not because our ball gowns would turn into rags, Cinderella-style, but because we all didn’t feel like heading to the after-party at Hard Rock Cafe anymore. We had always gone before, so this was new. “We’ve become tandercats!” I wailed.
Tandercats, by the way, is a Philippine slang word which means “old.” It’s derived from the tagalog word “tanda” which means old, and from the TV show Thundercats. Sometimes it is shortened to “tanders.”
In one episode of How I Met Your Mother, Ted says that once you hit 30, there are some things that you get too old to do, and these items go to what he calls his “Murtaugh List,” named after the character Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon movies, who always says the line: “I’m too old for this stuff.” Actually the real line doesn’t say “stuff” but Ted keeps it PG for his kids, haha. Ted’s list includes, among others: pulling an all-nighter, beer bong, and going to a rave. Hence Barney below, who accepted the challenge of doing them all despite being too old for that stuff.
Anyway, here is my sort of Murtaugh List, or 7 signs that you have become tanders:
(1) You don’t like staying up too late and would rather head home to get some sleep rather than party all night long. (Like what happened last night.)
(2) You refer to your younger colleagues in their early twenties as “kids.”
(3) When one of those “kids” say: “It’s Friday night! Let’s go dancing in a club!” you reply with either: “Can we go to a coffee shop instead?” or “Oh sorry, I have something else to do!” and that something else is sitting in bed with your laptop watching TV shows.
(4) When you watch movies or read books about “kids,” you think their ideas are too romanticised, grandiose, and impractical, and you find yourself rolling your eyes at a lot of parts.
(5) You never leave the house without slapping on sunscreen, moisturizer, or some kind of anti-aging product. And are those freckles or age spots on your face??? Noooo!!!!!!!!!
(6) Your metabolism is just not the same and you cast an evil eye on “kids” who can eat the world and still stay skinny.
(7) You dread your birthdays instead of looking forward to them like you used to. (See exhibit A: my blog post on turning thiry.)
Do you agree with anything on my list? What’s on yours?