Young Darcy is my protege. When I met her, she was the brightest bulb in my otherwise dim classroom. I offered her a job, I helped her go to grad school, and now she's settling comfortably into my business, an endeavor through which she hopes to soon be able to buy her mooching 26 year-old boyfriend a house. But I digress.
Most of our relationship has been like this: I talk, she learns.
It is the nature of things.
It was the nature of things.
Somewhere along the way, she has passed me by. While my skillset seems suspended in time in the 1990s, hers is bright and gleaming and, well, increasingly superior. Just yesterday she was helpfully showing me how I'd wasted my entire Monday. I'd brute-forced a task I could have done in 20 minutes if I'd simply used a new tool. My silence finally got to her.
"You there?"
"Yeah. I just..." I searched for a sufficiently petty phrase. "I just miss knowing more than you."
"You'll always know more than me," she lied supportively.
"I don't think 80s music and peeing standing up count."
She laughed.
"Take care of me when I'm old, would you?" I asked.
"You bet."