I'm beginning to think I'm that girl. The one you look at when you're a sophomore in college and with a turned up nose and say to your equally young friends "why she is in this bar," or "see her over there, she looks a little too old to be sitting in the student section," or the dreaded "shouldn't she be married by now?" If you peaked in high school--and you know who you are--or got away with a little bit more claiming that the best years of your life were experienced on a college campus surrounded by 40,000 other people dressed in the same gameday colors as you then you are that person too. You talk about back when way too much and you'd give anything to reverse the creaky hands of time. Well welcome to the club, you're destined for a lot of reliving the glory years when you were thinner, happier and oh so much more fun. Looking at photos brings an actual tear to your quickly wrinkling eye, and I'm here to tell you it's not going away.
Now, if you are a well-adjusted 20-something who is excited to be working and earning money or who has found that special someone with whom you will start a family, I commend you. You're on the track that you are supposed to be on...society says so. But, if you are a little behind and would rather head to that post-grad bar in Murray Hill, I won't tell, in fact, get me a vodka soda because I'm right behind you. Just last weekend, I was at said early 20s bar and having a blissfully ignorant time. Then, as someone always does lately, it was abruptly brought to my attention that "we were too old for this place." How did I not notice this? Was I that drunk? No. Was it because I didn't have my glasses on? Talk about aging myself, but no. Is it because in my mind I am still that newly graduated person who talks about college like it was yesterday? Perhaps. OK, yes definitely. How does that old adage go... you're as young as you feel... I had no idea that the bar we were in had an age limit, and I certainly wasn't aware that the age limit was all of 27. Guys, we have a lot more living to do, let's not start kicking ourselves out of establishments just because we saw three 24-year-old dudes taking a jager shot. Pretty soon we'll be self-banned from everywhere except museums and doctor offices, and I like one just about as much as I like the other.
To be honest, for once, sometimes this age can be so scary that I feel like moving right back into my parent's house. Things were simpler and cheaper for that matter. I know they would welcome me with open arms, which is probably half the reason I still consider it as a viable option. This age is scary because the chasm between you and those you were once on the same path as widens seemingly every single day. I'm on the stuck side waving, albeit happily, as my other friends move away, accept bling for their ring finger, purchase houses, and welcome babies into this life. Meanwhile, I'm waking up most days wishing it was 2006.
This phenomenon could be happening for many reasons. But most likely it is because I am my father's daughter. My father, who to this day, talks about the fours year prior to earning a degree as the best four years of his life. Never once has he mentioned that marrying my mom or having me and my sister were also pretty happy times, because I know in his heart nothing will ever hold a candle to the time between '76 and '80 when things were just right. And so I am here to prove that in this case the beer bottle doesn't fall far from the keg, which is ironic because you couldn't pay my dad or I to drink a frothy beer, but I think you get the fratastic picture. We both want to go back and there might be nothing in the future that changes that.
Just this week one of my co-workers asked me if I graduated last year. When I asked him the reason for the flattering question, he bluntly replied that I "like talk about college all the time, and it's weird." After assuming that this man had a terrible university experience... you know the kind... too cool to get involved, forced graduation to happen in three years so he could start real-life {shudder}, I concluded that he was the devil in freshly pressed khakis and politely answered, nope I just really had a great time back then. We turned back to our separate computers and despite feeling a touch judged and sad for that person, I felt alright with him thinking I was a freshman in the school of life.
Maybe something someday will replace the chills I get when I think of that tiny town in Northern Florida, or when I remember how new everything felt the first year I lived in the big city. But then again maybe not, and I apologize to all of my moved-on friends and future co-workers for the reminiscing that will never end.
