YOU KNOW YOU ARE MIDDLE AGED WHEN

• You’ve come to the annoying realization that your parents were right about almost everything.

• The bag boy volunteers to help load groceries into your car—in the “ten items or less” lane.

• You’ve stopped supporting your children, and started supporting your parents.

• You’ve found yourself discussing rain gutters.

• You remember your kid’s names, just not always the right one.

• You have nightmares about forgetting to move the garbage cans to the street for the garbage collector.

• Your high school yearbook is now home to three different species of mold.

• You buy “age-defying” makeup and “antiwrinkle” creams and believe they work.

• You’ve realized that all those geeky people in Bermuda shorts walking around Disney World include you.

• You recognize Led Zeppelin songs that have been turned into elevator Muzak.

• As a public service, you have agreed to never appear on the beach in a Speedo again.

• You’ve had three opportunities to buy every single Disney Animated Classic—“for the last time in a generation”

• You’d pay good money to be strip-searched.

• Wal-Mart and target seem to share your fashion sense.

• The only way you know to stop a virtual pet from beeping involves the patio and a sledgehammer.

• You can pack two suits, Five shirts, five ties, five pairs of underwear, five pairs of socks, a pair of shoes, and half of your bathroom into a carry-on bag—in less than five minutes.

• You know what Earth Shoes are.

• You think if you hear “Stairway to Heaven” one more time your head will explode.

• Your weight-lifting program seems to have no effect on your muscles, but the veins on the backs of your hands are bulking up quite nicely.

• On Saturday night, when your wife mentions “hot oil, a little friction, and squealing,” you tell her you’ll have the car looked at first thing Monday morning.