It's not so bad to be the 'old guy'

e Commercial Review
When you reach a certain age, you need to get accustomed to being teased now and then about reaching a certain age.
The past several weeks have seen me filling a vacancy in the daily newspaper’s newsroom.
It seemed only a day or two passed between the announcement that I was giving up the title of editor, maybe in hopes of dialing things down a bit, and Samm Quinn’s announcement that she’d been hired away by the Greenfield Reporter.
Our newsroom staff is small enough that the absence of a single person requires everyone to make an adjustment. In this case, it meant I would be back in harness covering Monday meetings of the Jay County Commissioners. That would allow reporter Kelly Lynch to do the “cop shop” rounds of local police, which ordinarily would have been Samm’s job.
As a result, I’ve found myself sitting at a desk as the oldest person in my own newsroom. And the references to my years have been anything but subtle.
“That’s because you’re old,” someone will mutter, gently and with a sense of humor, when I don’t get a popular culture reference of something about the Internet.
And when I make a pop culture reference, I’m often met with quizzical stares.
On New Year’s Eve, for instance, my wife and I were delighted to find that one of the movie channels in the upper reaches of cable television was presenting a digitally re-mastered version of “A Hard Day’s Night.” It was a wonderful way to spend the evening.
But when I mentioned it in the newsroom a few days later I learned that no one — no one — else on the editorial staff had ever seen the movie.
So references to Ringo’s “bloomin’ book” or “what a clean old man” Paul’s grandfather was made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
As someone who still remembers watching “A Hard Day’s Night” at the Hines Theatre and staying to see it screened a second time, that was a little hard to take.
I might as well have been making references to “Birth of a Nation” or Mary Pickford. My frame of reference was antique, and the “kids” in the newsroom didn’t hesitate to let me know it.
Teasing 66-year-olds may be prohibited somewhere by law, but not in our offices.
Now, I fear, the situation is only going to get worse.
Kelly Lynch, who has been a standout, award-winning reporter for the daily newspaper for the past two years, has accepted a job in Fort Wayne, closer to family and her network of friends.
And the only thing I know for sure about her replacement is that he or she will be even younger than Kelly.
And the kidding about being the old guy in the room is only likely to get worse.
I’m OK with that. After all, if there’s a trivia contest, I may be the only one in the room who can name all the Beatles.