With appropriately little fanfare, I marked my 19th anniversary with The Evening Sun this week. It seems like only yesterday I donned the only tie I owned and showed up 15 minutes early for work at our old Hale Street headquarters on a foggy September morning.

It would seem like yesterday, had I not been bombarded recently with reminders of the relentless passage of time. Exhibit No. 1: Remarking on my anniversary Wednesday, intrepid reporter Tyler Murphy calculated that he was 7 years old when I started work here. Assigned to Oxford as I was in my early days as a beat reporter, I no doubt passed little Tyler on the playground at some point as I covered an event at the primary school. Shoot me, now.

Exhibit No. 2: At a gathering of friends at my house over the weekend, one whom I had not seen in quite a while remarked at how good I looked. Always nice to hear, until she followed it up with, “And I love how you’ve let your hair go gray.” Gray? What on earth was she talking about?!? Apparently I’ve succumbed to the magic of the mirror in my bathroom which makes my coif appear eternally blond. It’s the same mirror, incidentally, that still shows me as having a 30-inch waist. Oh well ... as the Grateful Dead might say, a touch of gray kind of suits me anyway.

Exhibit No. 3: When Jessica Lewis told me that she was pregnant, and would leave The Evening Sun after giving birth to pursue her master’s degree, I apparently assumed she’d have the gestation period of an elephant. It was as if one day she shocked us all by not drinking at a Friday lunch, and the next she called in unexpectedly, informing me she’d given birth the night before. As a single man, I guess I’m still as baffled by the “how” of nativity as I am the “why.”