The other night I had the pleasure of talking to my oldest kid, a Millennial born in ’94, for over two hours. I read something recently about how one of life’s greatest joys is becoming friends with your adult children and wholeheartedly agree. We were both high at the time and laughed for most of the conversation, but at one point upon hearing something mildly controversial and perhaps sad, I said, “I guess you just never know what people are up to.”
The statement isn’t funny on its own, but in the moment sent us both into the kind of hysterics that you can’t recover from for a very long time: bellyache, tears streaming, jaw-aching laughter. And at the moment I realized: it’s happened.
I’d unlocked the final boss level in the gray-haired temples of elder wisdom. It was like the heavens parted and my polyester-pantsuit-wearing grandmother appeared for a moment, cigarette in one hand, Scotch in the other, plucking a golden Bingo chip from her latch-hooked Bingo bag to bequeath me. I may now spontaneously generate phrases that are simultaneously vague and condescending at levels that only particular church hall bake sale kitchens, senior center canasta tournaments and Denny’s early bird special circuits can access.
I’ve trained for this day my whole life. As a lifelong writer, I’ve always loved language. As poor as we were, my parents always kept their subscription to The Philadelphia Inquirer and I’m grateful for that. I read it all, even substitute-delivering papers sometimes for the regular paperboy in our apartment complex, one of my first paying jobs besides babysitting. I played all the word games (still do in The New York Times). We also got Reader’s Digest where I did the Word Power. In first grade, I was taken out of my classroom and brought to a weirdo room because I was reading on an eighth-grade level. This made me feel like a freak.
In high school I’d go around as newspaper editor saying things like “She was more scared than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs!” which might explain why I had no friends then and don’t have many now. I’m a word nerd and spend most of my days in an isolated but comfy self-appointed weirdo room. If you know me, it’s not unlikely you get the kind of texts that you have to click on to open because: buckle up for a casual novel moment.
I’ve written about the great phrase “It just wouldn’t do if we were all alike” that I learned from an octogenarian former librarian neighbor and have invoked in appropriate circumstances. What a a snide insult disguised as an observation; basically the Yankee version of the Southerners’ poison-dripping “bless her heart” in which zero hearts are wished any true blessings.
The phrase I use most often that would be on my gravestone if I was going to have a gravestone would be “Better Out Than In” because I can’t stand it when people swallow anger or other emotions and torture everyone by making them guess what they’re thinking or deal with consequences of poor communication.
Anyway, I’m in my wear-what-I-want, say-what-I-want, do-what-I-want era. This started in 1969 when I was born, but over the years I tried to make accommodations for polite society and its boring norms, tried to fit in when I never could and ended up feeling left out. Then I decided I never wanted to fit in anyway.
I’m a bitchy, sassy little rainbow sherbet and at my age, all I want to do is buy a vintage Airstream, make cute stuff, go camping and chill out with whatever time I have left.