When the local group, IGNITE, held its ice skating party at Casey Park this week, they pointed out in their announcements that IGNITE was for young professionals age 21-39.

Just missed being young. Again.

I'd love to tell you that it was the first time I realized I wasn't in the "young" anything category, but it wasn't.

But what I didn't realize is that as you age, you go through a period where you are in no one's category. You aren't young enough to go ice skating with the professionals, and not old enough to receive the discount at the Auburn Movieplex. In fact, you cringe every time they lower the senior discount (What's considered a senior now? 43?) because you're not ready to join that club yet; you're still having your lawyer look for loopholes for entry into those "young professionals" groups.

I was led to believe from anti-inflammatory medication commercials that age 42 was the next 22, and that you're only as old as you feel, which is why I've worn 16-year-old gloves all winter.

No luck.

And so, with all the free time you have not being part of any special age group, you spend evenings doing math equations, trying to convince yourself that life isn't halfway over, searching furiously for the reports that say people are living longer and the average age in America is now, say, 97.

But first, you need to find your darned glasses.

As Chris Rock said last week on "60 Minutes," the only way many of us 40-harrumph-somethings are going to be called young again is if we were to date Cher or die.

You know this when you're explaining to someone how you drilled your eight-track player under the dashboard of your 1969 Ford Falcon, back when you were forced to get up to change the TV channel, forced to park and walk inside a fast-food restaurant, and when full-serve was the only serve.

You know this when you're using more sentences that include the word "when."

You find yourself telling these stories to wide-eyed 20-somethings, who weren't even born when you graduated from high school, and you remember that your parents and your parents' parents told the same gee-whiz stories, except theirs always involved walking 10 miles uphill in a blinding snowstorm to school each day, so tell me again why you need a driver's license young man?

Your parents' stories also referred to the memories as the "good old days," which is not how 40-harrumphs describe our stories, leaving us to realize that we grew up in only the "old days."

IGNITE's age discrimination, er, limit was just another reminder that TIVO can pause live TV, but pointing the remote at yourself will not pause life.

You realize this when Mayor Lattimore talks about the need for Auburn to retain its young people, but he isn't looking at you.

You realize this on Wednesday, when the Metropolitan Development Association outlined its goals to keep young people from leaving central New York - and they weren't looking at you either. Where were these groups when we were young? If someone in my hometown had cared whether I stayed or not when I was young, maybe I would have stayed ... hmmm, maybe they weren't looking at me then, either.

No matter.

The next time IGNITE holds an ice skating party for young professionals, I suggest that all of us who are wandering lost somewhere between the nowadays and the good old days head to Casey Park for our own ice skating party. We may not have the energy to IGNITE, so we'll call our group SIMMER, and we'll all commiserate together. On skates.

And we'll demand to pay full price.

Editor Mikel LeFort can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 230 or e-mail mikel.lefort@lee.net