When I answer her question she physically recoils. "34? Are you SERIOUS? God."

She pauses.

"I'm an esthetician. You don't look 34. Have you had any kids?"

"Yeah, two!" yells Justin over the band as I shout "Three!"

"Hey, Steve! Check it out! He said two, and she said three!"

She giggles. Justin and I look at each other and smile, and look at her, and smile. We all stare at each other curiously and thanks be to beer, she shrugs and joggles away through the crowd, called away by Tommy Tutone.

She is 24. She had asked me where I live and I said here and she said Oh! Well then you'd know Monique DeYoung and that's when I smiled and said No, I doubt it. How old are you?

"I think we're finally getting kinda old for this," Justin had said as we limped like a couple of suffocating fish on the dance floor.

"No," I insisted. "It's not us. It's the music."

The DJ, thinking himself ironically hip, selects Toto's Africa with his tongue-in-cheek when he could have chosen this. Or this. Or this. But as it happens, the guy with the mike is among those who think We Built This City is 80s dancefloor gold.

(Whenever we go to a movie it has to be nothing short of epic awesomeness to make the baby-leaving worthwhile. Same with Justin & Kate's Annual Pump 'N Dump Extravaganza. By the time we're lathered up enough to kick it it's 10:30 and almost time to pass out and we're thinking "Dammit, we could DJ better than this with our ears stapled to the floor!" And well, we want to SUE SOMEBODY.)

Then it's Mony Mony and scores of naughty nurses and giant jellyfish and endless drunken pirates squeal in unison HEY MOTHERF*CKERS GET LAID GET F*CKED! as if they're the first 24-year-olds to do so, ironic tongue-in-cheek, fifteen years after it was cool to be ironic and tongue-in-cheek in response to that particular song.

Justin uses one finger to push his glasses up the sweaty bridge of his nose and sighs, "We were doing that in GRADE SEVEN."

God, I love Halloween. Even when over-aged and underwhelmed.