First of all, a hearty "thank you" to you, my chums, for the birthday wishes. My phone never rings or buzzes as much as it did Monday, and for those of you who phoned and got a decidedly awkward "conversation," I'm sorry. I suck on the phone. Y'all know that by now surely.
Anyway, some stream-of-consciousness thoughts about getting older:
When I was little, my cousin Reggie had gray hair. All our great aunts wished him well saying that young people with gray hair will be rich. He's always had money. Whaddo I got with my still relatively young self? A gray chin hair. WTF? I asked for "rich," not "witch."
Maybe the gods sense I have a speech impediment.
Which could actually be true given my teeth are shifting. What the crap is that about? I thought teeth were mafia-like -- once they're in, they're in. These jokahs are starting to shift like friggin' tectonic plates. (More on the plates later.) Oh, and more dental chat -- next week I get my first filling/fillin'. Busted. 27 years and then I get 2 cavities.
Isn't it great having a flexible spending account?
Sidenote: Mags just got her Medicare card folks. Was it wrong of me to offer her my congratulations and jack up the TV volume every time a Hover-round, AARP, Boniva or life insurance commercial came on? I know I'm getting older, but it's weird how my mind seems to have frozen my parents in time.I still envision them around 45, 46. It is so weird watching them grow older and to see just how set they've become in their ways. Mags packs my lunch every day. For three days now I've been getting an english muffin, yogurt, applesauce and pudding with whatever the main entree is. When I tell her this is too much food, three days in a row, I get the same thing today. I'm repeating myself (a sure sign of aging) and she's repeatedly not hearing a word I say. Awesome. We truly are two peas in some kind of pod.
On to other observations about my older self ...
I find I'm using my real voice more often. You may or may not know this about your own voice boxes, but for me, after so many years of telling animated stories, impersonating/making fun of people, I'm starting to settle into my Sarah Vaughn-ness and I rather like it. I'm cutting back on the morning show host brightness I've been using to convey professionalism and enthusiasm, as I'm discovering it usually has a way of backfiring the second I don't offer a chipper "Hey! How are you?" Instead I get the, "What's wrong with Danita today? She's not talking very much. Nothing funny. Something must be wrong." And I bloody hate that.
Even worse I hate when someone feels "afraid" to ask me if I'm okay themselves and instead they go talk about how they don't think I'm okay to someone else and then the 3rd party winds up wandering over under false "work-related" pretenses to wait three beats and then ask me if I'm alright, because, "Well ... we were just wondering."
And does it surprise you as you get older what your friendships mean ... or in some sad cases, meant? The past few weeks I've started journaling again around bedtime & I'm-seriously-not-getting-out-of-this-bed-this-morning-time and I realized some things.
One -- I despise those bulletins on myspace yammerin' about "If U'r my friend, you'll respond to this" crap. It's the Brooklyn Bridge situation all over again -- you jump and I'm supposed to jump. I refuse to repeat junior high. Refuse. (I mean, I barely got through it in the first place. In fact, that's probably why I'm crap on the phone because we didn't have one during my formative "Call, me, k?" years. My sister, still in the infancy of her army career, decided that the nifty Southern Bell/Bellsouth service that allowed you to place collect calls and bill them to your (parents') home phone bill was awesome. That bill was so astronomical my daddy smoked his cigarette in one breath and the phone was emphatically shut off for quite.some.time. And by the time it was turned back on, I was so scared of catching the blitzkrieg of curses and swats from my parents that I didn't even give the number out until like 9th grade.)
Two -- I'm still operating under the premise that I don't need/can't possibly make any more friends than I already have. I feel incredibly blessed -- like a person who's spent their entire life feeling generally unlucky who turns 28 and discovers, very a-ha-like, that she possesses these friendships that actually make her quite the opposite. Given that I have to say I've felt a bit lame recently when people ask who I hang out with and I have to say, "All of my friends live elsewhere."
"Well how are y'all still friends if you don't hang out?"
I dunno. "I'll see you when I see you" is good enough for me given the histories we have with one another, I think. Still, the lame feeling is more about me relying on those histories instead of generating things in the present. And I continue to be amazed at how something like AIM and Google Chat and work e-mail can not only sustain friendships, but re-invigorate them. I used to feel like we had to be in the same town or I had to save up money and vacation time so that I could see you -- and those things are important for obvious reasons -- but now I don't feel that as strongly.
I dofeel like I'm growing into a decent grown-up, though, by respecting the fact that friendships shift (like the plates), some wane and warp and some just become about other things. It's completely obvious now that I've written it, but I have to admit that I haven't always fully acknowledged that friendships must change as people do. I've been (and probably always will be) guided by loyalty -- if we were friends years ago, we'll still be friends years from now. When I needed you to be there for me (in whatever way) and you showed up, that cemented a place for you in my life regardless.
So that explains how I can tell someone else about any one of you for HOURS and have the person ask me where you live, when did we last hang out or what does he/she look like and I'll respond, "Oh, they live far away. We haven't hung out in ... dern ... it's been a hot minute. She's probably got long hair by now for all I know, but that's my homie!" A co-worker challenged me by asking, "Well how do you really know y'all are even still friends. People change."
"Well people don't change in their entirety. Just because a person doesn't drink anymore doesn't mean we can't be friends still. It may mean we have less in common, but if what you do have in common is more substantial than a beverage, I feel you should be alright."
That whole conversation just led me to believe that some people still don't know how to make friends. Everything between us needn't be the same. It amazes me how subtle the idea of homogeneity is to most people. Brands, places, people, things -- we all should use the same thing or else you're less or trying to be more ...
I'm trying to avoid the urge to neatly wrap up this rambling post with something cheesy (like listing Celine Dion's "Because You Loved Me" and how I can be free to be me because of it). Clearly I'm faltering. Schmaltz is good, right?
Damn, I'm getting old.