Feelin' ways about stuff

I felt my age yesterday when I revisited a Miami high school that could be a real life version of that school from Fame. Just with better weather and nobody running around in leg warmers and leotards and randomly breaking into song.

No worries. I'm not a dirty old man who hovers around teenagers. I was there working on a story about a group of kids who designed such an impressive set of artistic, futuristic, furniture that it is on its way to Basel, Switzerland, soon to be displayed in the summer at Art Basel, one of the largest, most hoity toity art festivals in the world.

I like to think I'm a youngish hip guy still. I mean marriage hasn't completely left me in need of hip replacement.

But as I tried to connect with these kids once more to let them know that I too once frowned a lot and felt things about...other things, they just gave me that look, the same one I used to give my parents. While I am in theory old enough to be their dad, these kids could have cut me some slack, 'cause in generational terms I'm closer to them than their folks.

No dice. I'm thinking if I'd worn black jeans and black t-shirt I might have gotten in. That appeared to be the uniform for the artistic kids, whose company I really, genuinely enjoyed. One of those little brats cool kids even commented that my nicely tailored, cream colored, side-vented, single-breasted, peaked-lapel suit, purple pocket square, and sky blue windowpane shirt - that's right; I can dress myself, dammit! - reminded him of an "old" video he'd seen of Miami Vice.

Still, kids don't know everything. For example, they didn't create the first cussword substitute with "fudge it." When I was sporting my Member's Only jacket, you didn't make your swears obvious then either. Like, you wouldn't say that something was effed up. You'd say "that wangs chung!" Get it, like the band? That way you confused your parents and managed to criticize something you didn't like.

In the words of Michael J. Fox's coach in Teen Wolf, "There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese."

Bet those smart Fame kids didn't know that.