Uncle Sam Wants Them: The young who fight, and the older who watch them.

A few years ago, Jerry Lewis -- who, in his old age, is sort of the Fritz Hollings of show-business figures -- was at a meeting with studio executives. There was some talk, apparently, of his directing a new picture. The meeting had been going smoothly until one of the younger executives -- a guy who was maybe 30, 31 -- began to share his thoughts on casting, script changes, possible locations, things like that. He clicked through his considerable list of notes, winding up with a deferential smile and a "What do you think, Jerry?"

Jerry gave him a silent, stone-faced stare. An ugly silence filled the conference room. Then Jerry turned, slowly, to the person on his right and pointed to the young executive without looking at him. "He's twelve," Jerry said, with baffled rage.

And that, according to my sources, was that. Meeting over.

It's all very funny, of course, until you discover, as I did last week, buried in some article, that the average age of the men and women aboard the USS John C. Stennis -- a massive, state-of-the-art aircraft carrier currently protecting our freedoms somewhere in the Arabian Sea -- is 21.

Twenty-one. Let me, as the kids say, break it down for you. Most of them were born around 1981. They dimly remember the Gulf War. They cast their first presidential ballot in 2000. Who among us has not, after one of these brave young people has been interviewed by, say, the comparatively ancient Ashleigh Banfield, and after he has breezily pointed out the complicated avionics aboard his million-dollar helicopter, pointed to the television and said, "He's twelve."

We all maintain a personal "Timetables of History" poster in our heads: "I was six when Nixon resigned; I was 12 when Reagan was inaugurated and the hostages came home; I was 21 when the Gulf War started." But gradually these milestones cease to be something that happened to me and become something that happened in history. Time turns us all into Jerry Lewis. It's not enough that we realize how old we are; we must also realize how young everyone else is.

A 51-year-old American -- born in 1952 -- was barely old enough in 1970 to serve in the Vietnam War. And for people roughly my age -- I'm 36 -- war is something waged by an all-volunteer military for specific ends, not some larger cultural movement of which to be a part. Whether you were Rosie the Riveter back home during the Big One or some bearded, hyper-tense Trotskyite at Berkeley during the Complicated One, you were still part of a large American moment. Sitting at home, watching MSNBC and wondering if Ashleigh Banfield is going to wear that sleeveless number again, is not the same thing.