How I Know I'm Old...According to my Sisters.

"What do you want to do tonight, Katie?" My little sister looked up at me with hopeful eyes. She loves it when I babysit, especially on Friday nights.

"I dunno, what do you want to do?" I asked in return, shrugging my shoulders like the vultures in The Jungle Book.

"I don't know. That's why I'm asking you." Then...crickets.

It's times like that when a hard truth hits me square in the face. I'm on the far end of a very large age gap between me and my two little sisters, ages eight and nine.

The thing is, I've been noticing this a lot lately. Most of the time, it only happens when I'm discussing movies with the girls, but there are other signs of a gap between us. If you don't have siblings who are much younger (or much older) than you, it might be hard to understand. But sometimes I think I know how my parents must have felt when I was small.

Just for fun, I tried to find the top five "really old sister moments" I've experienced and put them together for your enjoyment. Who knows? Maybe you can relate.

1. As previously indicated, they don't get any of my classic cartoon Disney references unless the movie has been released from the vault on DVD. Sometimes not even then. Some major movies will never go out of style: Cinderella, The Lion King, etc. But I can't help noticing that my sisters remember more about the sequels than the originals. They can quote The Lion King 1 1/2 all day long, but they look at me like I'm crazy when I start belting out Be Prepared at the top of my lungs. Of course, they tell me it's because I'm "being weird," but I'm not convinced yet. And when it comes to lesser known movies (nowadays) such as Robin Hood...well...it's best to let sleeping dogs lie. They watched it on Netflix, and I'm still icing that blister.

2. They roll their eyes if I start dancing to my music while I'm cleaning. Hey! Kids don't have a monopoly on having fun. However, they've apparently cornered the market on cool dance moves. My layman's version of the moonwalk doesn't quite cut it with these little critics.

3. They ask me to tell them about a time before Game-boy Advance, DS, and X-Box. Ummm...I had a huge Game-boy Color that weighed five pounds, made little blipping sounds when I pressed the control buttons, and all the graphics were pixelated. Just kidding, not really. I actually don't remember my old GBC that well, because I was more of a reader/ movie watcher/ go-outside-and-play-with-a-stick kind of person.* However, I do remember owning a Tamagotchi back in the late 90's. To show the girls or not to show the girls? That is the question.

4. I'm out in town, and someone compliments me on my "lovely daughters." Okay...I'll give the general public that one. My sisters do look a lot like me. But the girls aren't small anymore, and it makes me wonder how old I look, ha ha.

5.  "I love my brother, my sister, my Dad, my Mom...and Katie too." My youngest sister was only six at the time, and she was trying to be nice to me. That was the first moment I realized she thinks of me as another adult in the house, not a kid. Needless to say, it was kind of bittersweet, yet it pretty much sums up our relationship. I'm at that unique point where I can mother them without having the responsibility of being their mother; but I can still relax, let loose, and just be their sister.

There it is — the top five "really old sister moments" of my life. If you have any experiences with small children who are close to you (they don't have to be your siblings), please don't be shy. Share them in the comments section. Maybe someday I'll have to update this list to include all the differences between twenty somethings and "the next generation."

* I'm not anti-video games. Most of my closest friends are gamers. I just wasn't as into that stuff when I was little, save for a few selections (Harvest Moon). If I had discovered Zelda back then, that might have changed, ha ha.