Music Festing and Feeling Your Age

 When it was announced that the Austin City Limits music festival would overlap the Texas/OU game this year, there was a whispered hope that the crowd at the festival would necessarily skew older as the college kiddies fled en masse to Dallas.

Home on Monday, sunburned and hoarse, minus one blanket and a bit of dignity, I can assure you that there was no such luck. There was a surplus of the kind of absurdly taut bodies that can only belong to minors. (Looking back, it seems that instead of heavily lining our eyes or attempting to grow facial hair in an effort to look legal, we could have all just gained 20 pounds and an air of general exhaustion for much the same effect.)

It was my third year at the festival, but this year was markedly different. I brought galoshes and hand sanitizer, drank water in addition to wine, and found myself advising young people on adjacent blankets to get practical degrees because "back-up NFL punter" is an ambitious goal, yes, but also a little absurd.

And as I approached the people around me and was repeatedly offered drags off of a community joint, I found myself politely declining. "Thank you, but what I'm really after is some sunblock."

Suddenly and unexpectedly, there I was: Trading a spliff for some SPF.