You know that you are truly old when you have absolutely no clue as to who is the latest teen heartthrob. Said heartthrob could walk right past you on the street, and you would probably just look at him and think, huh, that kid could use a haircut.

So would be the case with Justin Bieber and me. A while back I did hear about him and some mall pandemonium, but it was a freaking mall, and I thought a bunch of tween girls were maybe just bored and felt like causing some trouble. Turns out that wasn’t necessarily the case, and this extremely fresh-faced (maybe a little too fresh-faced for my comfort, to be honest) young man seems to cause a riot wherever he goes. 

I suppose I should be glad that the youth of today are going after someone at least theoretically obtainable, unlike my best friend and I with our extremely unhealthy obsession with certain members of Duran Duran.  Seeing as how they were in their late twenties and we were all of twelve, I’m wondering how my mother put up with the bajillion posters of them in my room.  Oh wait, that’s right, she just thought I liked their music.  Little did she know that Elizabeth and I spent our school recesses walking around telling ridiculous stories of how Simon Le Bon saw me in the audience from the stage of a concert, invited me backstage, and then decided to marry me.  Of course. We were best friends because she was in love with John Taylor, so we didn’t have to compete against each other for our future husbands.

But I would like to think that I had a bit more sophistication, even back then, than to admire a dude who would wear these shoes without a trace of irony.  And we’re not even going to talk about the hair. Or the watch.