For instance travelling back to Albury from Wodonga after the City2City Run Walk on Sunday morning, a sign on the bus window read: Thank you for being nice!

“See that,” I point out to my husband as we swing precariously from the grab handles in the bus aisle.

“We’re nice.”

“Good marketing,” he says.

As we alight from the nice bus, the nice bus driver says: “See ya all later, now go straight home and have a shower. You all stink!”

Suddenly we were playing somewhat less nice but, to be fair, Mr Nice Guy Driver was pretty accurate.

Getting ready for the Kasey Chambers/Bernard Fanning Sooner Or Later Tour in Albury last week our six-year-old came out with one of her finest compliments yet.

“Mum, you look like a teenager!”

I was momentarily lost for words. Stunned even. For YouTube-loving Grade one-ers, teenagers occupy a higher realm.

The comment was even more fascinating as I was wearing my mum’s Verge silk teal wrap sleeveless top she wore to my sister’s wedding a decade ago and had recently gifted to me. Nanny should never have parted with that top! I also wore the same black stovepipe 7/8 pants and Miz Mooz black heels I wear to work about three days a week, every week. It had to be the navy blue eyeliner! Alternatively, the denim jacket stuffed into my oversized-and-not-very-teenager-like camel, leather handbag.

Either way I didn’t seek an explanation, I only wanted to savour the moment. Forever.

“Do we pay you enough pocket money?” I say to our youngest.

“What!?” she says.

“Never mind,” I say.

Thinking back to how I actually looked as a teenager it was a long way off what I wore last week.

Flat shoes, for one. Worse still, plastic flat shoes. I remember caddying 18 holes at Mulwala in white, plastic flat shoes with heart cut-outs. My golfing career was short-lived and my handicap was not even my handicap. I do recall the blisters though.

I remember iconic Australian swimwear brand Brian Rochford, big in the 1980s and 1990s. I had a lavender one-piece and an itty bitty, black bikini. Not now, needless to say.

Cool kids wore Wham’s Choose Life T-shirt from their hit video Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, interestingly promoting an anti-drug and anti-suicide campaign. I did not have this T-shirt but oh how I wanted one. Instead I had the sweater marking The Border Morning Mail’s masthead transition to The Border Mail. Obviously this was all sorts of cool that my children could not fathom or need never know about. Let’s just say that I have wanted to be a journalist since I was 12.

Any honest Gen-Xer would have had at least some fluorescent items in their wardrobe. For me it was mostly lime fishnet tights and socks, though there could have been more. Repressed fashion memory is a wonderful thing.

Driving to drop our daughters to their grandparents on the night of the concert last week, the youngest says to the oldest: “Mum wants to look like a teenager.”

The eldest replies: “Do you think she looks like one?”

“Well, kinda,” the youngest says.

“STOP IT NOW!” I say.

“You don’t have to say another, single word.

“You already had me at teenager.”