Old

For years, I was always the youngest.

I was always surprisingly young.

People were surprised how young I was at work or if I were in the cast of a show.

Like I was the youngest.

I’m no longer the youngest.

There are still people who are surprised that I’m young, especially with this ridiculous beard on my face where I look even older.

They’re surprised that I’m merely 44.

But I’m no longer considered the young one.

All that said, in some ways, I have always been old.

Your Daily Lex.

I’m talking about noise.

I never liked noise.

I never liked a loud, a place where the music is blaringly loud.

I hate having to shout or strain my voice to be heard, and I hate struggling to hear people.

My whole life, I would say, I think I have had some struggles hearing people in noisier environments, especially when there’s lots of conversation happening or when there’s really loud music.

Every time I’ve ever checked, whether on my own or with a medical professional, my hearing is fine.

But I really struggle, as I guess many of us do, to focus in and hear conversation in very noisy environments.

So I was at a double bat mitzvah over the weekend.

A good friend of ours and their twins were having their shared bat mitzvah.

It was lovely.

And the reception, the party, was lovely, with a DJ who was way too loud.

If it were my party, I would have said to them ahead of time, I don’t want you to be too loud.

And I would have said to them ahead of time, if it is too loud, I’m going to come over to get it quiet, and I’m going to need you to get quieter right away.

I did that at at least one of our events.

And they got it.

Listen, I want people to enjoy the music, but I don’t need, at certain kinds of parties, to feel the bass in my chest.

I don’t need my ears to hurt.

I don’t need my watch to be warning me that hearing loss is possible after just 10 minutes or whatever.

It was definitely loud.

It was so loud.

And it’s interesting, unlike many venues where I’ve been, it wasn’t that the DJ had all their own equipment.

They did have their own DJing equipment, but you hooked into the venue’s PA, because all the speakers were in-wall.

But it was crazily loud.

And that made me feel old, that I was complaining about it being too loud.

Now, all my friends were complaining that it was pretty loud as well, but they’re all old, too, just like me.

But it was a lovely affair.

We had a great time.

I got to say, I think I hate just about every emcee.

At least the parties I get invited to, the emcees, as their DJs are spinning tracks and playing music, they never stop talking.

All right, everybody, clap your hands.

All right, we need everybody on the dance floor.

All adults, we need you, too.

It’s like, oh.

And they talk over the song constantly.

I’m like, let’s just hear the song.

And I get, like, it’s so popular to have these party motivators or dancers or whatever else, and you want it to be hype.

But once it is hype, chill is my feeling.

And I get that this is not what the DJ community has decided is the right way to go.

But what I’d like to see is chill.

If the kids are having fun and they’re partying and they’re on the dance floor, you don’t need to keep hyping them up.

If it starts to flag, sure, do your thing.

But if you’re talking every two seconds, which it was like when you count down the seconds on how far away your microwave popcorn pops are and whether you can take it out, it was like that.

He couldn’t go more than two and a half seconds without talking again, and it made me absolutely crazy.

The other thing that was craziness-inducing, but I did okay, was a million pass-around appetizers and then the main course and then so many desserts.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been to an affair that had more desserts.

It was a crazy quantity of desserts.

They just kept wheeling out racks of cakes and treats and desserts.

Plus, there was an ice cream bar.

Plus, there were pass-around desserts.

It was crazy, an exorbitant quantity of desserts, of which I had none.

And granted, my approach to losing weight right now is not strictly denying myself of things, but I also know what I can and can’t do.

Like, if I wanted one of those desserts, I could have had them and then tried to allocate the calories and make the rest of the way they work, but my concern was if I had one of those, I wouldn’t be able to have another meal later.

And this meal was somewhere between lunch and dinner.

It was a lupper, but I didn’t want to burn all my calories on that dessert because I knew I’d be hungry later.

I lost weight.

The next day, my reading was down, so I was proud.

But it was hard.

It was hard to be surrounded by those delicious-looking desserts.

Also, when they brought out the menu of what the options were, I knew right away that Ursula and the trainer would be like, you should get the salmon.

I sent him a photo, and he was like, you should get the salmon.

It was good.

It was good salmon.

It was actually great salmon.

So yeah, I went to a bat mitzvah.

I got a headache because it was so loud, and I didn’t gain weight because I was careful.

So way to go, me.

I’m old.

That’s how I measure success at a party.

It was loud, and I didn’t need too much.

Way to go.

Anyway, I hope you’re having a wonderful Tuesday, May 13th.

Tomorrow, we’re going to talk about death.

Sort of.

Goodbye.

Lex.