When you go to a funeral and take notes, that’s a sign that you’re on the downhill slope. Open casket? Um,no. Big gathering with food and songs? Yes, please!

When you look at your puppy and wonder if you’ll have time for another one. That’s a sign, too.

If you turn on a major news channel and the financial expert looks like he’s in fifth grade, you’re old.

You can also tell that you’re getting on in years when you wake up with sore legs and aching butt muscles because last night you danced to (count ’em) two songs at your brother’s birthday party.

When you realize that it’s worth the wait for an entire year just to get to the two weeks of lilac blossoms, you’ve gained the wisdom of age.

And if you plant a baby spruce tree, just a tiny sprout, and hope that someday someone will call it “majestic”, you know that you’re getting older.

When you suddenly move your tongue around to the place where they pulled out your bottom molar years ago, and you instantly understand the meaning of the idiom “long in the tooth,” that means you’re getting on.

And finally, if you look at the newspaper and the arts pages are filled with kids whose names you don’t recognize, you’re officially old.

Come to think of it, if you look at an actual newspaper, the kind that gets dropped on your doorstep, the kind that you fold and read with your morning coffee…well. If you do that, read a newspaper made of actual paper?

You guessed it, you’re old.

What did I leave out?