I Had An Eye Opening Experience This Past Weekend And Now I Need The Stoolies Help To Tell Me If I'm Simply Turning Into An Old

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As I sit here and wait until 8pm, I need to give my brain a distraction from basketball. We are nowhere close to tip off and I'm starting to go a little crazy, so this is a blog that I need the stoolies to help weigh in on. I'd say 99.9% of my blogs are basketball related, outside of that time during the pandemic back in April 2020 when we talked about grilled cheeses

Man, what a time that pandemic and quarantine were when we were all collectively losing our minds. Feels like another lifetime ago. 

Throughout the years, as I was getting older I never really found myself "turning into an old" as they say. Maybe it's because I spend all day obsessing about a basketball team and living/working on the internet, but I certainly haven't felt any older. My preferences didn't really change, I didn't experience any sort of weird injuries/aches as I got into my mid 30s, stuff like that. I've certainly heard about it, but had never experienced it.

Then one day out of nowhere my achilles started to hurt. It's certainly not through any sort of physical activity or working out, so I found that weird. That lasted a few weeks and then went away on it's own. I most certainly didn't do any of the exercises that trained physical therapists DM'd me, I just figured it would take care of itself.

What that did do though was give me the warning signs that maybe I actually was turning into an old.

Fast forward a few months to the beginning of April, and I found myself with at the time was my most concerning development.

First off, me simply buying something out of curiosity felt like a big time "old" thing to do. But I love Oreos. Who doesn't love Oreos? Give me some Oreos and some ice old milk and I'm in heaven. But those megastuffed Oreos were just wayyyyy too much filling for me. My thought was they had to be popular since they make em, and I needed to know if that was just me or if this was a common take.

The results were about 50/50. Some people gave me the sad news that I was in fact turning into an "old", while others agreed that double stuff is the true way to go. That made me feel better that maybe I actually was winning the battle against Father Time.

Well now I'm back with another situation after this past weekend that I need some help with. 

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Now here's the thing about me. It takes a lot (see: Greenberg) to convince me to shell out a billion dollars to go see a movie in theatres. Obviously I'm going to the store beforehand and sneaking in my snacks and drink, but even still my Chosenness has me just waiting until movies come out on HBO/Netflix etc as opposed to seeing them in theatres. The last movie I went to was Top Gun, but only because it was on a $5 movie day at the theatre by my house. I don't even have kids or anything and I still can't justify paying that much.

But this past weekend I was offered a ticket to join my friends and their kids to see the new Mario movie, which I was excited for. I love Mario. They told me we were seeing it in 4DX, and I clearly had no idea what that was because had I known there's no way I would have agreed to it. Am I the only person on the planet who has never seen a movie in 4DX? It's possible. Once we sat in our seats, my friend's son asked me if I ever had seen a movie this way, and when I said no he immediately started laughing. I thought that was weird because ya know, it's a movie. How different could it be? I've seen 3D movies before so wearing the glasses was whatever, but boy was I wrong.

The way those seats shake/vibrate/rock during those movies is absolutely awful. It ruined the entire experience for me. Not only does it not really match what you see on the screen, it's wildly distracting. I'm not there to ride a rollercoaster, I'm there to enjoy being on another planet mentally and watch some Mario. Not only that, but there was this feature on the arm rest about water? That was confusing until there was a scene with water and then mist started coming down from the ceiling. Fuuuuuuck that. 

So I'm asking you all. Am I alone here? Is this the final stage of "turning into an old" where I can't even enjoy the movies? It was essentially 90 straight minutes of constant shaking and dipping and mist. I thought I was going to vomit, which is also very concerning. I walked out of that movie wondering why anyone would willingly sign up for that experience. To be honest I don't even remember what happened because I was so fixated on being tossed around in my seat. Not only that, but the seats didn't recline so you can't even put your feet up! What kind of shit is that? 

Obviously, my friend's kids loved it, but they are children. That's when I thought I might just be cooked. Maybe everyone else actually likes this stuff and I'm now just that grumpy old guy in the back half of his 30s that is just stuck in his ways, which would be very depressing.

So tell me. Am I crazy? Am I just an old now? If so, what's the AARP process and who do I need to talk to to get that started.