Ask Rachel

Interesting fact: There’s no agreed-upon nickname for this decade yet (surprise!) or the last one, but the Brits call the 2000s the “naughties,” and I’ve never wanted to go back in time and/or to England so badly.

 

Dear Rachel,

I just turned 50. I thought this one would be a smaller deal than turning 40. Why would I think that? No clue. But boy, how wrong was I. When I turned 50 and a day, I learned that hangovers get automatically rougher in this decade. At 50 and a week, my headache was still lingering like an in-law with attachment issues. Is it downhill from here? Is this why you don’t see pub crawls for someone’s 70th or 80th birthday?

- Wimpy at Fifty

 

Dear Wizened Elder,

What you’re enduring is like a coming-of-age ritual, which in many cultures is wasted on the young people entering adulthood. Really, the big shift is leaving adulthood – and I say this as someone who got there when I was like 27. Booze hurts, and your friends kind of suck for leaving your house without taking out their empties, and you find your best social circle is the one that likes eating a buffet at 4 p.m. and then lying about getting up early the next day.

– Welcome to the club, Rachel

 

Dear Rachel,

I’m starting my own business. I can’t take it anymore, working for someone else and having “supervisors” and other euphemisms because apparently we can’t say “boss” anymore. I just have to figure out what my business will be. I went to register my business and they wanted me to explain what kind of good or service I provide. So that’s kind of a sticking point right now. What do you think I should do?

– Takin’ Care of Business

 

Dear All Superego and No Bite,

I was driving home late the other night, and I was really hungry. But even McDonald’s was closed. Either that, or it just looked sketchy with no one there. And I didn’t want a burger anyway. What I really wanted was a home-cooked meal, so for a moment I could pretend I had a family who was also awake and hungry at 4 a.m. Can you do something like that for me, right when I need it?

– Working overtime, Rachel

 

Dear Rachel,

You want to know what keeps me up at night? It’s wondering how future people will distinguish this decade of twenties from the roaring one. We just call that “the Twenties.” I can’t imagine future people won’t call this current decade “the Twenties.” Did people in the 1800s call their decade “the Twenties,” too? When do we come up with a new name for our twenties? Or else when do we transition the label forward a hundred years?

– Identity Crisis

 

Dear Twangled and Tworn,

It is a fact well established that culture as we know it didn’t start until the 1900s. So we naturally didn’t think about what future people would call their decades. It’s like when the Modernists called themselves “Modernists,” and future people (who are just as modern!) were like, well poop, what do we call ourselves now? So maybe this decade is the Post-Twenties. Or, if things keep progressing as well as a fifty-year-old’s hangover, it’ll become the Whimpering Twenties.

You’re twelcome,

Rachel