Forever Young

Recently, there have been a lot of revelations that remind me that I am no spring chick anymore.  It spans from activities like leering through my blinds to shake my head at the latch-key kids across the street when they make a ruckus late at night all the way to checking TVGuide.com to see if there will be a new episode of Dateline or not.  I don’t understand new social media trends like SnapChat or GroupMe (I mean, why can’t we just text?  I don’t even have 30 friends that I need to message at the same time).  Young people call me Ma’am.  I am constantly reminding my friends to wear sunscreen and stay hydrated in the summertime.  Finally, I write letters to the manager.

Getting older is a long process that doesn’t happen over night and if I’m a lucky woman, I’ll continue this process for a long time.  Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile who I was with the person I am becoming.  To make myself feel better, I decided to list out some things that remind me that not only am I still young, but that I have no idea what I am doing.

1. Fitted sheets.  Can’t do it.  I can fold a lot of clothes both big and small but fitted sheets is not one of them.  I even go to Youtube and follow step by step instructions and it always ends up as a large ball that is shoved into the bottom of my drawer.
2. Doing my make-up.  My mom never really taught me how to do my make-up and while I think I get away with looking put together, I make a lot of mistakes. I don’t think I have ever put on mascara without smudging it on my eyelids first.  Also, not quite sure I am applying basic things like foundation or bronzer appropriately.  I’m almost certain that the classier women in my life notice this regularly and probably discuss it when I am not around.  They’re right to do so.
3. Fart jokes are still funny to me.  In fact, at work just the other day, I used LinkedIn Professional Services to do an advanced keyword search on the word Fart in people’s resumes.  Over 600 profiles came up in the USA and I surfed through most of those profiles. And I laughed so hard that I cried.  Obviously, I encourage EVERYONE to do this.
4. Halloween is still something I take super seriously.  In fact, I went trick-or-treating way longer than acceptable, if you think going after the age of 12 is unacceptable.  Which it is.  And the answer, if you’re wondering, was my senior year in high school.
5. I still let my mom buy my work clothes.  Not ALL of my clothes, obviously (I mean, who am I, my younger brother? #AMIRIGHTROBERT??) I do, however, wait until major holidays or birthdays to mention that I need to go shopping for new clothes and then I just let nature take its course.  She has started to say things like “you can just pay me back” but we both know that check is not coming in the mail anytime soon.
6. My handwriting.  There’s no way for me to convey this online or on this post, but if I drop a piece of paper at work with my handwriting on it, most people look for a lost little boy with a broken hand because he’s obviously the one who wrote it.
7.  I hate spending money on utilities around the house because when I graduated college, I was super poor.  I’ll splurge on top shelf tequila for my Mexican Martini, because I am an adult, but I won’t buy batteries for the remote control when it runs out.  I mean, why spend money on something when you can just walk up and change it manually?
8. Finally, no matter how old we get, I will always treat my brother like he is 8 years old.  I used to do this thing where I would wake him up super early and say “IT’S CHRISTMAS DAY!  SANTA CAME!  HE REALLY CAME!” and then jump on his bed to make sure he was awake.  I still do this every time we sleep under the same roof.

So while I might make responsible healthy meals from scratch and overuse Pinterest, this list reminds me that I still have a long way to go until I actually FEEL grown-up.  And as the late, great Aaliyah once said “Age ain’t nothin but a numba”.