Remembering the Loss of Darren

Sometimes, I'll have a dream about an old friend. I haven't seen him in years, and I'm always so happy to see him. As usual, he looks great. We'll be doing something, talking, and I'll start to wonder why he looks so much younger than I do. It doesn't usually dawn on me why until I wake up. He never got gray hair, or laugh lines, or middle aged spread. He's frozen in my memory, frozen in time, before he got sick. Before he died of AIDS.

He'd be glad that the automatic image my brain calls up is of him looking gorgeous.

It's rare that you end up being best friends with your first high school crush. I met Darren in the fall of 1980, when I was a freshman. He was only 3 months older than I was, but he was a sophomore. He had a part in the first play of the year, and I was an usher. He was very good, delightful to watch, and ridiculously good looking on top of being talented. I developed a raging crush on him.

We discovered that he lived right around the corner from me. I loved it when he'd pick me up and drive me to school in whatever sports car he owned at the moment; I felt incredibly cool and very special. I was jealous when he had girlfriends.

It took a while, but I discovered that I was happier being his friend than his girlfriend. Girlfriends came and went, and breaking up was never a Bruce and Demi affair in which they were best friends afterward. Sometimes, they barely spoke afterward. Darren and I, though, became closer over time. I was glad that I wouldn't be relegated to the scrap heap, so to speak, any time soon.

I'm glad that I remember his smile so vividly, because I don't think I have many photos of it. In most photos, especially school photos, he refused to smile. He didn't have an "I'm soooo cool" James Dean glower, either. In most of his school photos, he looks deeply depressed, like he's about to cry. "Smile, for crying out loud! What is that look?" I'd say. "I look stupid when I smile," he'd reply.

He had a wicked sense of humor, which was occasionally too bawdy for my taste. He was a talented artist, drawing detailed and accurate automobiles of all kinds. While I was an actor and a technician, Darren was an actor, period. He had no desire whatsoever to do any tech work. When we both joined the debate team, I did both debate and speech events, but Darren only did speech, events like Dramatic Interpretation.

We got to the point where we could usually tell what the other was thinking. We developed a signal, a hand-to-the-forehead-and-then-outward motion that meant, "Catch this thought." Most of the time, we could.

My parents didn't want any of their kids getting a driver's license before they were 18, but when I was 15 my dad bought a VW van that became, by default, the car I learned to drive in, and subsequently became "my" car. My mom made Darren his own key, at least 2 years before I had one, so he could drive me places in my car. We called it "bussing," since we were in a VW "micro bus," and we'd go together or in groups to the mall, to the movies or out to eat. He loved the magic and joke shop. Once, we bought Groucho Marx glasses and went to McDonald's wearing them. Another time, we drove the van backwards through the drive through, and ordered out of the sunroof.

I don't remember exactly when, or how or with whom, he started smoking pot. I was such a total straight arrow, uninterested in chemical escape and unable to imagine either rebellion or conformity as a means of bonding, that it caused me literally physical pain. I was devastated, every day. He knew I didn't approve, but I don't think the depth of my reaction was entirely clear or would have made any sense to him. (With certain people, I spent my time waiting for them to grow out of various behaviors, while they undoubtedly spent their time waiting for me to get with the program and act like a "normal" kid.)

"Look at my pupils," he'd say, or, "Smell my shirt," to point out to me during school hours what he'd been doing between classes. He'd giggle when I scolded him. He moved on to other assorted intoxicants, and was soon dealing.

He had a part time job at McDonald's, but made far more money selling drugs. He always figured that he hid this fact rather well, but come on, what 16 and 17 year old kid buys a sports car with cash? "I could have saved that from my job," he said when I pointed this out. Not in this universe, I thought, but his parents seemed oblivious, so who knows?

My mom always knew who was doing what among my friends; either I'd tell her, or they would. Darren didn't drive me or my car while intoxicated, and never offered me anything – in fact, forbid others to – so she didn't worry about me, just about his own safety.

We were still in our teens when he told me that he was gay. He made no real secret of it to anybody. I was a total mother hen – my friends frequently called me "Mom" – so my worry about him increased. It was the early 80s, and AIDS was brand new. The CDC had identified three high risk groups – gay men, intravenous drug users and hemophiliacs – and Darren was in two of those groups, and cavalier. "Be careful!" I'd say, over and over. I was terrified that something would happen to him.

He did not share my worry.

He came home from a weekend trip to Las Vegas and told me, rather gleefully, "I was really sleazy this weekend." I was beside myself. "Are you insane? Do you want to get sick? Do you want to die? You CANNOT be sleazy in Vegas!"

He laughed. "That's exactly why you go to Vegas!" he said. Over and over, if I panicked he'd shrug and say, "If I'm going to get it, I'm going to get it. I'm not going to worry." I tried not to make myself frantic.

When he was diagnosed as HIV+, just a year or two later, I never again criticized his behavior.

I read every news story about treatments, hoping for a cure.

Darren did my makeup for my engagement portraits; I knew he'd do a better job than I would.

After I got married and moved to a small town hours away, Darren sent me a stack of photos from Reno, "so you won't be so homesick." One of my favorites was a shot of the sign outside of a business that I used to pass daily while I was at work, "The Hitchin' Post Wedding Chapel." It was one of the tackiest things I'd ever seen, and he knew it. Another favorite was a shot of a man walking toward the dumpster in Darren's apartment complex. On the back Darren had written, "This bum goes through my garbage every day." I laughed out loud; I still laugh at that.

He moved to Hollywood, where he kept a coffin in his living room ("This is the guest bed,") and once hung his Christmas tree upside down. He became fascinated by vampire stories. (Now that vampires are mainstream, I wonder what he would have thought about the whole "Twilight" thing.) One of the last photos he sent me before he got very sick is the photo that still hangs on my wall. He's sitting, in sunglasses and impeccable clothes, on the beach in Santa Monica.

Once when we were both visiting our parents at the same time, he walked around the corner to see my family. My older daughters were probably 3 and 4 at the time, and fascinated by his left arm. He had a bat tattoo that extended the entire length, with the bat's body in the crook of his elbow and the outstretched wings going from wrist to shoulder. My girls had never seen anything like it, and they trailed their fingers over the drawing. "What is that?" "How did you do that?" "Does it come off?" they wanted to know. His concise answer: "With needles. It hurts. Don't do it." Is there a better way for an honorary uncle to explain body art to preschoolers? I don't think so.

He never said so, but I think he appreciated the fact that we weren't reactionary and paranoid about getting sick ourselves. In the late 80s, some people were still saying things like, "How do we know for sure the virus can't be airborne?" We hugged him; my kids sat on his lap. He was no danger to us.

When he got so sick that he could no longer live alone, he called to arrange to stop by my house on his drive from California to Pennsylvania with his mother, moving from his Hollywood home to hers outside of Philadelphia. My husband was at work and my kids were at school when they came through, and they only had about half an hour to spend, but it was nice having him almost to myself one more time. He was starting to look, and feel, a little too thin, but if you passed him on the street you wouldn't have known that he was ill. I got to hug him twice more before we were separated by thousands of miles.

"I need to see Darren one more time when it gets really bad," I told my husband.  He didn't even hesitate; Darren was family. Another dear friend, whom he'd called "Little Sister" for years, talked with me and decided that she, too, would fly out if we sensed that he was slipping away.

Darren took up sewing. In the last two photos he sent to me, he's modeling a coat he made and holding up a quilt he'd crafted. He finally looked sick, even though the only part of his body you can see clearly is his face. He was far too thin, and his skin was grayish. I bought a plane ticket to Philadelphia.

He phoned me, surprised by the news. "Have you booked a hotel? Don't book a hotel without checking with me! Parts of Philadelphia are really scary; you don't want to go there alone!"

His voice was starting to sound hoarse, and he slurred slightly. He was on an enormous amount of medication, including painkillers.

He phoned a week or so later, and said, "I hope that ticket was refundable. I really don't want you to see me like this. I can't go anywhere or do anything with you anyway." I started to protest, to insist that I didn't care, but he asked, in no uncertain terms, "Please don't come. I don't want you to see me like this. I don't want anybody to see me like this. I want you to remember the way I used to be."

"Is your ticket refundable?" It wasn't, and it cost slightly more than my monthly mortgage payment. "No problem. It's totally refundable," I lied.

I should have made the trip months earlier.

Darren died in 1995; we were both 29. Our friend Sue called to tell me when he passed away. His mother planned a memorial service in California, just 2 hours from me, so that his West Coast friends could attend. I left my girls, now 7 and 8, at home, but brought my infant son, whom Darren had never met. He sat on my lap in his sailor suit, one of three people in the room that I knew, Darren's mom and another high school best friend being the other two.

It was the second time in less than a year that I lost a very dear 20-something friend to disease. No matter how much time you have to "prepare," you're never prepared. I felt decades too young for my friends to be sick enough to die. Accidents I could have understood. Illness seemed somehow wrong.

Professional modeling photos from his time in LA sat in frames in the middle of the room, and the mourners sat in a circle. His aunt read a poem, some formal words were said, and then the time was opened to the rest of us for remarks. Everyone sat in silence; his friends from LA sat across from me looking uncomfortable.

Nobody wants to go first, I realized. OK, I'll go.

I told stories. I talked about the rubber noses, the ever changing array of cars, the things we'd done while growing up. I don't remember a fraction of what I said, but when most of his family laughed at something, I knew it was OK. And after the ice was broken, then others felt comfortable getting up and speaking.

After the service was over, his friends from LA came over to talk to me. "Until you got up to speak, I almost thought I was at the wrong service," one of them joked. "After you spoke, I thought, 'That's the Darren I know.' "

Sometimes, in my sleep, my brain forgets that he's gone. And I never dream about him sick; he's always healthy, vibrant and grinning. I can hear that distinctive laugh, just as clearly as I ever could.

I miss you, Darren. I love you always.

Are We There Yet?

Two things prompt me to share this essay now, even though I wrote it years ago. One, I just returned from a great trip to visit my oldest child and her husband.

Two, I spent a great deal of time on the phone today with a frazzled Expedia customer service rep who was rebooking the trip we have planned, in several months, to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday and my brother's 60th birthday. We're all headed to Hawaii, somewhere my brother's never been. We researched this trip for over a year, watched prices fairly obsessively, squirreled away money and finally booked a few weeks ago. We booked at a golf resort on Oahu's leeward shore, not because we love golf (none of us play) but because it had a great price on what we wanted - mini suites with kitchenettes. Apparently those great prices were their last ditch effort to stay afloat, because they just declared bankruptcy. They'll be closing in a month, displacing hundreds of holiday travelers and those like us who are leaving months after the holidays.

"Thank you so much for having a sense of humor and being patient!" the Expedia rep said to me. "I've been on the phone with angry people all day." No sense in getting angry here. Hey, even though the new booking would have originally cost us more, they're changing our reservation for free because we already booked and paid. Plus, we're going to Hawaii! How bad can it be?

(Note to self and others - I've never dealt with Expedia customer service before, but based on this experience, I highly recommend them.)

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I believe firmly in the value of travel. My parents had very little discretionary income – truth be told, they had little income to cover a lot of necessities. Yet, we took a family vacation every year, and more day trips than I can count. It was just part of the fabric of life.

I can only remember staying in a motel twice. We may have done so more than that, but it was extremely rare. We stayed with relatives, or we camped. I could spot a KOA Kampground sign from miles away, even before I could read. I went on an airplane for the first time at seventeen; we always drove wherever we were going. (Airplanes were for rich people.) When we could, we picnicked instead of eating at restaurants. And yet, we covered thousands of miles. We visited volcanoes, geysers, the ocean, the redwoods. We saw moose, elk, antelope, buffalo and bears. We swam, fished, hiked, climbed, and spent time just sitting in patio chairs.

When I was the only child left at home, and a teenager besides, family vacations seemed less relevant. Still, I went to Disneyland with my friends two years in a row, with my mom along as a chaperone. I spent a week with my dad and my cousin in her cabin. There were still day trips with my family, but now there were day trips with friends as well. We once drove to a neighboring city just to eat at a particular Japanese restaurant. I've never had wanderlust in the sense of having to constantly change dwellings and/or jobs, but if I spend too long without getting out of town at all, I get antsy and grumpy.

After growing up and getting married, Dan and I took our first family vacation when our oldest child was eight months old. (We'd been married for about a year and a half.) It took a bit of talking to convince my husband that it was a good idea; he was much less sold on the idea of yearly vacations (or, really, any vacations) than I was. We stayed with my sister in Orange County, and spent a day at Disneyland as just a couple while my sister babysat. Suddenly, Dan felt better about vacations. Since then, we've made sure to take a trip every year, and occasionally more.

I sat once, years ago, around a table with a group discussing a mutual friend and her post retirement travels. She and her husband, it seemed, spent more time away from home than they did in their own house. Their latest trip had taken them to Europe. We were all quite jealous. Then someone said something that demonstrated a sharp divide between my opinion and that held by the rest of the group.

"Well," she said, "I guess you can go all those places if you don't care what kind of hotel you stay in. I mean, they'll stay in discount motels."

Another woman agreed. "And they'll fly coach. All the way across the ocean!"

"They don't eat fancy food, either. They'll just pick up something simple in a pub."

"Sure, you can go anywhere, I guess, if you're willing to put up with that."

Then the fantasizing started. "If I were to go, I'd want five star everything – hotels, restaurants. I'd want first class plane tickets; you know, where they give you hot towels and eye masks and even foot massages."

The conversation went on while I sat amazed, wondering if they'd noticed that I was no longer saying anything. The thing that truly amazed me was that these were people who not only did not take five star vacations, they didn't normally take any. I'd known them for years; they were not travelers. I sat thinking, if the choice is between motels and pub food and not going anywhere, the choice is easy for me. Bring on Motel 6!

I've stayed in lovely resorts with helpful concierges and free group activities. I don't have the money or inclination to go five star, but I do know the difference between those properties and some others I've stayed in, like the motel made from mobile homes, whose pool was a Doughboy. Still, to me a room is a place to sleep, shower and dress. As long as it's clean and I can sleep, I'm happy. The reason I'm there has nothing to do with the hotel I'm in.

I don't even need a great view. I'll be leaving it all day anyway, and it doesn't do me much good when I'm asleep. I was glad my oldest daughter shared this opinion when she went on her high school graduation trip. She and her two best friends spent a week in Hawaii, and out of necessity they booked an inexpensive room in a high rise hotel. They took gleeful photos of each other standing in front of their windows, indicating the view – a multi level parking garage, so close to the cars that they could see make, model and plate number. They didn't care. They were 18 years old and in Hawaii without parents! They went snorkeling and to luaus, but because they were teenagers, they didn't have endless funds. Lana, my daughter, spoke fondly of buying 99 cent fruit and yogurt parfaits from a fast food restaurant, and then eating them on Waikiki Beach, feeling on top of the world.

Our four children had a great time on our various travels when they were growing up, but they're also kids. We listened to hours of complaining and bickering. "We'll be in the car for how many hours? I hate the car! I'll be so-o-o-o bored!" Siblings who were barely civil to each other when they shared a room were often thrown into the same bed, resulting in a recitation at breakfast of who kicked whom, who stole the covers, who snored and who hogged the bed.

For our first trip to Hawaii, we had to drive for four hours to the airport, then spend approximately six hours on a plane. The older two complained so long and so loudly about the travel time that we finally threatened to leave them at home with Grandma, as they were clearly missing the point. They grudgingly agreed that maybe they could stop complaining long enough to get to Hawaii.

Once we got there, we also listened to our ten year old complain that we didn't spend enough time at the hotel pool. "We're always leaving the hotel to go somewhere!" she groused. I finally had to say, "We did not spend thousands of dollars and come thousands of miles to the most remote pieces of land on the planet simply to stay in our hotel! There are swimming pools at home."

Every parent would also recognize our battles about what they could and could not buy, and where we could and couldn't go. Children who used the bathroom twice a day at home suddenly needed us to stop the car every hour so they could use gas station restrooms. We endured complaints about the food, the weather, the scenery and everything else.

It took years before we knew that, despite all that, they actually did get something out of the long drives and shared beds. When Lana went hundreds of miles away to college, she met kids from all over, kids with a variety of backgrounds. She found one fact about her new friend Sarah very odd. "Mom," she told me over the phone, "can you believe that she's never been anywhere? She's been in her hometown and here at school! That's it! We have to plan a girlfriend trip and take her somewhere!"

Here's a Thought...

                I've been married for longer than I was alive before I met my husband. I've been a parent for longer than I was childless. I hit both of those markers years ago. Since I expected to spend most of my life as a married parent, I am neither surprised nor dismayed.

                I don't tend to pat myself on the back too much, either, unless I'm exposed to some train wreck of a life that makes me think, "How is it that you didn't see that coming? Amateur."

                I continue to be baffled by other people and their thoughts on marriage and parenthood, though. That's also nothing new, but it is continually astonishing.

                Years ago, I ran into a high school friend I'd lost track of just after she graduated. I was 24 and she was 21; I'd last seen her shortly after my wedding. I had a husband, two kids and a mortgage. She was divorced. "You're still with the same man?" she said. "That's so cute."

                Um, yeah. That's just how we thought of ourselves – so cute.

                (That's sarcasm, folks; I've discovered that I have to label it, or people can't tell.)

                A few years later, I was commiserating with a girlfriend as she griped about annoying male habits. I agreed with her on some point or other, saying the usual, "I know exactly what you mean."

                "No, you don't!" she said. "You don't know about men! You're married!"

                Wow. "And I married what, exactly, a hamster?" I asked.

                "No. Well, you know what I mean. You aren't out there, like, dating or anything."

                "How many hours a day do you spend with your boyfriend? I live with a man!"

                "It's not the same."

                "I know! I live with a man."

                She remained firm in her assessment that my lack of dating experience meant that I knew little about men. "You know about your husband, not about men in general." Well, OK, but that's like telling the mother of an infant that she doesn't know about babies, or a sick person that they don't know about disease. It may not be all-encompassing information, but by golly, it's first hand, reliable and in depth.

                Actually, I was always sure – and I still am – that I knew more about men from being "one of the guys" than I would if I was dating any of them. Guys, think about how you behaved around your buddies, and how you behaved around girls that you wanted to impress. If you grew up with me, think about the times you hushed me before I spilled the beans in front of your girl. Who knew you better – that is to say, who had a more accurate picture of what went on in your head and your life?

                What I want to talk about today, though, is one of the commonly held beliefs that just don't make any sense to me. I mean, as usual, I can tell you why people believe what they do, but to me it seems fairly ridiculous.

                I cannot come up with any compelling reason to believe that sleeping around before you get married will make you more likely to be happy settling down and being monogamous after married.

                Leave all of your preconceived ideas about choosing sex partners aside and consider the two following scenarios.

                Scenario One: It is perfectly morally acceptable to have sex with anyone who wants to have sex with you. In fact, you are encouraged to have many different partners in relationships lasting anywhere from minutes to years. You will never be able to be truly satisfied and happy with your life unless you've experienced everything that's out there. Try any number of sexual philosophies and practices, and enjoy them all. Then, one day, meet someone you will love more than you'll ever love anyone else, someone who is more compatible with you than anyone else ever will be. From that point on, you will only have sex with that one person. Even if you meet many willing, attractive, compatible individuals after you've made this commitment, even though in days or years past it would have been acceptable or encouraged to bed them, now you can't, because you've chosen your one.

                Scenario Two: You have always known that you will only ever have sex with one person. Before you make that commitment to your one, no matter who offers, the answer is no. You very carefully choose your one, because it's a matter of great importance. After you have actually made that (lifelong!) commitment, you are encouraged to have sex as often as you both wish.

                Now ask yourself: which person is more likely to be happy with their partner, happy with their sex life and content in a life of commitment and monogamy, someone who lived life #1 or life #2? Who is going to be more likely to fear that they didn't get a chance to do everything and to meet everyone?

                Right now, before you tell me at once how wrong I am, how unrealistic and naïve and stupid, and and and, let's set the parameters.

                You probably noticed that I talked about giving consent and being willing, but didn't tie it in to the usual noun that follows the word consenting in these discussions, "adult." That's because I'm thinking about all the people of my acquaintance who were having sex before they were adults. By and large, they felt justified in doing so then, and as adults they say things like, "Kids are going to have sex. It's just a foregone conclusion." I am not, for purposes of this discussion, bringing in the idea of adult to child sex, although I have heard people make that argument. ("In past centuries," they say, "it was just understood that…" Or, "We like to deny that children are sexual creatures, but they're not." I'm not going to have that discussion right now.)  I'm assuming that we're talking about teens to teens or adults to adults, with about a 4 year wiggle room margin.

                I'm also not going to muddy the waters with a discussion on the exact definition and purpose of "consent." The standard definition is my preferred one, thanks, and I'm not going to get into minutae like, "After how many drinks?"

                I also know people who will be practically yelling right now that this is why monogamy is flawed and unnecessary, because it sets people up for failure. I am not OK with that philosophy. Did we learn nothing from the key parties and "open marriage" movement of the 1970s? Wait, of course we didn't. Humans are notoriously bad at learning from the experiences of others; why do I bother to ask? If you need me to pull statistics on how often "open" relationships fail, on their own or in comparison to monogamous relationships, I'll do that. However, I think we can all be grown up and informed enough to agree that giving your significant other your blessing to have sex outside of your relationship does not guarantee that your relationship will be successful, or even that it will be free from jealousy.

                While I'm not advocating, obviously, condemning those who had sex before they were married (I find that I have to state the obvious, or someone will argue the point), I am puzzled as to how anyone thinks that having multiple partners before marriage means that you'll be happier after marriage. I remember talking to the adorable 18 year old ingénue in a play we were both in years ago. She was gushing about her boyfriend, and another cast member asked her if she thought he'd be proposing soon. She was aghast. "Oh, no! My dad would kill me if I settled down before I sowed my wild oats!" she said. I just can't imagine.

I also couldn't wrap my head around it when a friend's mother kept encouraging her not to "rush things" by getting married to a man she'd lived with for five years. When did that become "rushing?" She insisted that she loved the daughter's beau, that he was a great guy and that they were smart people, but she panicked every time they said, "engaged" or "married." If I was cautioning one of my kids about a relationship of five years or more, it would be because I thought the partner was a bad choice, period, not because I thought they were rushing things.

I was equally puzzled when a friend broke up with her high school sweetheart when they were well into adulthood because, "I don't want to be with him just because I've never experienced anything else." Think about your best friend, the one you've known for years, the one who knows you inside and out, the one you can't wait to phone with news and spend all the time you can with. Would you ever say, "Geez, you've been an amazing friend, and I have no complaints, you've seen me through so much, but I've just got to dump you so I can see if there's someone more amazing out there"?

After they broke up and she started dating other people, she felt that the fact that she found new relationships that she was happy in (but nothing permanent so far) was a clear indicator that she'd had the wrong guy before. After all, if she was "supposed" to be with him, wouldn't life be unremitting misery without him? The fact that she found other men attractive, enjoyed their company, and had great sex with some, meant that her earlier, long standing relationship had been "wrong," she was sure.

Was I the only one who went into marriage intending to stay married and stay faithful while fully aware that I would undoubtedly, in the future, meet guys who would be great catches if I was single? Full TMI disclosure: I have had sex with 1 person in my life. I have met many that were charming, funny and delightful, who made my hormones buzz, who caused momentary daydreams or wishes that it was morally acceptable to sleep around. I kept my clothes on; it wasn't that huge an exercise in willpower. It was simply what I expected life to be like. I do not feel deprived. I am not missing out. If I was unsure about that, I have only to look at the lives of others to see it. They took what is, for me, the road not taken, and I wouldn't trade places.

I'm also not advocating staying in a bad relationship because "you made your bed, now lie in it," or because you can't bear to be wrong or to feel like the time you spent together was a "waste." (Did you learn from it? That's not a waste of time, even when you have to end it.) I'm here because I choose to be, not because I don't know that I have other choices available. I have a deal breaker list; everyone should. My husband knows what's on it, and it's nonnegotiable. Some people are in relationships from which they should RUN, not walk. I don't think that negates the idea that sleeping around is bad.

I don't believe in the idea that there is only one perfect match for everyone, and you either find that match or settle for second best all your life. Any number of people could be a perfect match for you, or me. That doesn't mean that choosing one is a bad idea. It doesn't mean that monogamy is doomed to fail.

I also think that the people who say to me, "Oh, I'm SO glad I didn't stay with my first boyfriend/girlfriend" don't negate it, either. The question at hand is whether it's easier to "settle down" after feeling free to have sex with any available partner, not whether or not young people generally have good taste or a sense of long term goals and how to get there. (For the record, some do and some don't. That shouldn't surprise anyone.)

I know many people who are monogamous after a very non-monogamous past. I know it can be done, and I know that people can be happy doing it. I just think it would be an easier transition if their past had been celibate. I know it would be tough for me to go through life thinking, "Oh, geez, why didn't I meet you earlier?"

So many people tell their kids not to drink until they're adults, but that it's OK then. The concept of, "not now, but feel free when the circumstances are right" shouldn't be foreign. Nobody feels that it's burdensome to keep people besides their spouse out of their finances and child rearing – why should it be burdensome to keep them out of your pants?

I submit that it isn't.

Use Your Words

I am absolutely giddy right now with the anticipation of coaching a brand new homeschool speech and debate team, with one of my best buddies, one I met years ago doing college theater. We'll be competing in the same league, against some of the same schools, that I competed against as a kid.

I did not enter high school intending to study either speech or debate. The opportunity sort of snuck up on me. Some of my fondest memories of high school come from debate tournaments; I never would have predicted that.

In honor of this exciting new adventure, here's my memory of my first speech contests. I now help organize my Rotary Club's speech contests; life comes full circle.

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I listened to myself arguing with my husband recently. My angry retort included the phrase, "That is why I can lend absolutely no credence to your assertion…" I'm used to the way I think and speak, and even I found myself thinking, "Who talks that way?"

Dan has always been flustered by the way I argue. "I can't argue with you. You were on the debate team," he used to say when we were dating, and even when we were newlyweds. It drove me crazy.

"What does that have to do with anything?" I'd fume. "If you have a valid point, it remains valid." He was used to determining who was "right" or who "won" by tallying up which of us had the last word; or, alternately, seeing which one of us expressed themselves the best. I was used to both sides weighing what the other had to say. Eloquence is nice, but it doesn't mean the well expressed opinion is the right one.

By some quirk of personality, I express myself best when I'm angry. I'm not a shlump in daily conversation, but I become blazingly articulate when I'm upset. It's a skill honed during adolescence. My friend Dave is convinced that it's a skill also helped along by the fact that I don't swear. Eliminate certain words from a person's vocabulary, and they have to work harder at expressing opinions. I remember fondly Dave's reaction when I described someone as a waste of the air he breathes.

It must be frustrating to be married to someone who becomes better able to express themselves the angrier that they get.

You'd think that I'd enjoy arguing, given this proclivity, that I'd be one of those people who uses verbal jousting as a form of entertainment. In fact, I dislike it. I've learned not to run from conflict, to meet it head on. If need be, I'll be the one to instigate – when a complaint needs to be made to a company about shoddy service, for instance. Still, I do not enjoy conflict.

Ariane, my high school best friend, has an entirely different approach. She thrives on verbal jousting. It took me a long time to understand that about her. I remember being frustrated with her during our senior year, and asking her, "Why do you pick fights?"

"I don't!"

"Yes, you do! You do it all the time. You will deliberately pick a fight."

She didn't quite see it the same way I did. "I just like to see how people express themselves," she explained. She wanted to know how they would support their opinions, especially under duress. She chose volatile subjects and incited strong feelings because she felt that was when she was likeliest to get the purest form of the other person's opinions, she explained.

It was a totally foreign concept to me. I have spent my entire life feeling that we should all just get along and that everyone should find common ground. Ticking people off to see how they expressed themselves was something that never would have occurred to me. It surprises no one that Ariane became an attorney.

The high school debate team was full of lawyers in training and lawyer wannabes. It's excellent practice for someone who will make their living navigating the legal system.

I always felt that those of us who were also actors had an edge over the others. When competing in debate, whether on a team or solo, you are required to argue both sides of an issue. During one round, you will have to convincingly argue for whatever the current proposition is. During the next round, you must argue just as convincingly against it. Either way, you are expected to have documentation to back up your assertions. Actors are used to being convincing while having someone else's words come out of their mouth.

Of course, there are generally debate team members who dislike the actors, who feel that they are less intelligent, less intellectual and just generally too frivolous to be competing against serious minded, brilliant folks like themselves. It's annoying.

I first competed in debate during my sophomore year. The school was frequently sent notices of speech contests in the area, and these notices were always given to the debate team adviser. Frankly, I think the information should be broadcast more widely than that, but the assumption is, or at least was then, that the debate team members are the students who will be interested in and capable of such speeches. So, as a sophomore, I learned of a speech contest sponsored by a local Elks Club.

Four of us ended up representing the school. There was no qualifying task; the adviser just took those of us who were interested. Three of us were also actors. The competitors were myself, Chris, Suzy and Merrie. Suzy, Merrie and I were actors. Chris was a senior and the captain of the debate team. After high school, he was headed to a prestigious school back East on a hefty scholarship.

It was generally accepted that Chris would win, and the rest of us were just along for the ride. Chris especially seemed to think so. He found it to be unconscionable that mere actors were allowed to participate. This was a Serious Event, to be attended by Serious Students who had done Thoughtful Research. I don't know if it bothered him that we were female; I don't recall him being particularly sexist. I did get the distinct impression that he thought I was also too young to be of any consequence, even though Suzy and I were in the same grade. He seemed to be upset that more seniors couldn't compete. He cut Suzy some slack since it was her second year on the team and she'd proven her worth. Merrie and I got no such concession. At least Merrie was a junior, not a lowly underclassman.

The contest topic was, "Freedom and Its Responsibilities." I rolled that thought around in my head for a few days before I started to write anything. I didn't want to fall on my face the first time out, especially since it would confirm Chris' opinion that actors were inferior. We had to submit a written copy of our speech to our adviser to be approved before we competed. I gave mine to the teacher, rather anxious about what she would say.

I expected to be given some revisions to make. Instead, when she handed it back, she had nothing more to say than, "Good job." I was slightly puzzled, but glad that she liked it. I thought I had some pretty sound points. If she had no revisions, she must feel it was ready to go

The competition was to be held during an Elks Club lunch, so we got out of school to go. We all dressed up, and our teacher drove us to the luncheon. It was held in the Sky Room at the Mapes Hotel, a plush downtown property. The Sky Room was on the top floor, with windows all the way around two sides. The view was gorgeous. The hotel had, in the past, entertained such luminaries as Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. I don't remember what we ate, but I remember that we ate it at a table in front of the room, facing the club members. I worried a lot about spilling food on myself or displaying manners that would shoot down my chances.

I don't remember in what order we spoke. I thought I delivered my speech well, and that my actor's training helped. Never let 'em see you sweat. It's an asset to be able to appear unruffled when you're unsure and intimidated. It was also easier to do when I was presenting my own ideas.

I think we were all shocked when the winner was announced, and it was me. I remember being called up to the podium, the audience smiling and applauding, and the presenter sincerely congratulating me. Merrie and Suzy were both happy for me, but Chris looked like the proverbial ton of bricks had fallen on him. In his universe, it was supposed to be his award, and I was supposed to be filler, someone to take the slot that gave us enough participants to compete. He was not supposed to lose to a sophomore drama student!

The hotel was across the street from the bank building where my mother worked. I insisted that we all go across and up to the 15^th floor to tell her before we went back to school.

Today, my mother would probably be called an administrative assistant or something of the sort. Back then, she was called a legal secretary. She was the office manager, typist, bookkeeper, appointment book and general right hand of an attorney. He and his brother had a practice together in what was then the First National Bank building.

Someone, maybe the teacher, worried about us just dropping in on the office. I was sure it would be just fine, and insisted as much. We trooped across the street and up in the elevators, teenagers and their keeper loose in the downtown business district.

I introduced everyone to my mother. Chris smiled politely. He didn't say or do anything that was outright rude. He was too controlled for that. He did, however, sulk all the way back to the school. After the obligatory remarks to me immediately after the competition, I'm not sure if he ever spoke to me again. Word was, he never quite got over being furious and feeling cheated.

Back at school, the teacher dropped a small bomb on me, one I was immediately glad she'd saved for after the competition. "When I read your speech, I didn't understand it," she said.

I was floored. "What?"

"Well, you know, you used the words 'however' and 'although' right next to each other. I didn't see how that would work. But when I heard you say it, it made sense."

My mind spun. She'd told me it was good when she read it! How is it even possible, I wondered, that she has a college degree, is currently at work on her Master's Thesis, and she could not understand the writing of a high school sophomore? If she had told me this before the competition, it would have completely thrown me. I would have been convinced that the fault was mine, that the ideas were unclear and badly expressed. Having just won, though, having not only won but won against Chris, I knew the speech was good. Other people obviously "got it." I had to entertain the new and frankly frightening thought that my teacher was, well, perhaps not very well suited to her profession.

Maybe it was this kind of angst that contributed to the process of creating the next speech I used in a contest. This time, we were not required to submit the text beforehand. Consequently, I did not put anything down on paper until I was in the bus, on the way to the contest, this time for the Rotary Club.

I won.

My mother, while proud, was beside herself. "What can I say to you? If you'd lost, I could say, 'Well, if you had prepared, you might have won.' What am I supposed to say now?"

I tried to explain my processes to her. I had composed the speech in my head weeks earlier, and had simply been fine tuning since then. By the time I write anything down, I have rolled the words around in my head, trying out and discarding dozens of phrases. I have internally debated the merits of "azure," "cobalt" and "indigo." I try out half a dozen ways to say something before I actually say it. I even do this to a lesser degree in everyday conversation. Just because I hadn't committed anything to paper didn't mean that I hadn't given it any thought or expended any effort. I finally wrote it down just so I could have a "cheat sheet" for the competition. I know that most people need rough drafts on paper. My rough drafts are virtually always internal. She wasn't sure whether I was serious or rationalizing. I was very serious.

My husband, God love him, is not a language lover. He works best with machinery. Machinery makes sense to him. Words are nebulous, interchangeable, inefficient. Give him an electrical circuit any day. In this, we are totally incompatible.

Where Were You?

Shortly after my oldest child started high school, I was driving her to her early morning class. There's a 6:45 religion class available just off campus for members of our church. Despite the early hour, she was excited about the chance to go.

When we were about a block and a half away from the church, something odd came on the news. Normally, at that hour, it's traffic news and humor items. Unexpectedly, the dj reported a plane crash in Washington DC. "A plane has crashed into the side of the Pentagon," the voice said. "There is a fire. Reports are sketchy, but we'll bring you updates as we receive them." He didn't sound too upset or concerned. He said something vague about another crash in New York, promising, "We'll share details as we get them."

"Poor pilot," I thought. I was picturing a little private plane, flown by an amateur who became disoriented and crashed.

The date was September 11, 2001.

I dropped my daughter off and started the 5 to 10 minute drive home. The news report repeated one more time before I got there. They had no new information, but sounded a bit more worried this time. I hoped no one had been seriously hurt, knowing that the pilot probably was.

With 3 children in 3 different schools, and a preschooler still at home, I had a routine. About the time I returned from dropping off my oldest, my 8^th grader would get up and eat. As she was getting ready to go, my first grader and my two year old would get up. We'd all drive Big Sister to school, then return to finish eating and get my 6 year old ready. After we dropped him off, my youngest would watch TV while I showered and got dressed. (Yes, I drove the big kids while in my jammies.) The TV was always off until the big kids were at school – otherwise, they'd never get ready. I called my husband every day after the last school drop off; unless there was an emergency, I wouldn't be on the phone during our carefully choreographed morning.

I was surprised when the phone rang, just after I got home. It was my husband, sounding terse and cryptic. "Turn on the TV," he said.

"Why?"

"Just turn it on."

I hate mysteriousness. "Is this about the plane that crashed into the Pentagon? I heard already."

"Yes and no. Just turn on the TV."

"What channel?"

"It doesn't matter. I'll call you back."

I don't remember what channel I turned on; I don't remember if it was satellite or network. I remember the image of the smoking New York skyscraper, and the baffled voice of the announcer.

Two plane crashes? In one day? What were the odds? I was still thinking of small, private planes; I was still imagining malfunctions. Those poor pilots, I thought. Words started to penetrate my brain, words like "airliner" and "sabotage" and "hijack."

Hijacked planes? I imagined displaced passengers and crew being shooed off the planes before the hijackers took it from the airport. Was the one in Washington DC hijacked? Who would do such a thing? Where had they taken the planes from?

I left the room to make sure my second oldest was up and getting ready. The constant replays made things seem as if they were happening in front of me, even when they weren't. It was now about 10 a.m. on the east coast. As I came back to the family room, the announcer was saying something like, "I can't believe it! I just can't believe it!" Both towers of the World Trade Center were now on fire. "Let's see that from a different angle," the newscaster said. The replay began, and a plane came into view, a huge jetliner. It was flying low, below the roof of the towers. It disappeared behind the building, and just as I expected to see it emerge on the other side, a ball of flame erupted from the tower. They showed the replay over and over, and each time I felt just a second too long had passed, we'd see the plane at any moment, and the fireball burst through. Every now and then, they'd say, "We have footage taken from (another vantage point)," and that film would play.

That third plane changed everything. I couldn't hang on to the idea of separate accidents. It was deliberate. Someone meant to do this. Why?

I could not imagine that the plane was full, that any of them contained more than one or two people. I was sure that, at any moment, the news would cut to befuddled passengers on a tarmac saying, "They just forced us out. I don't know what they wanted." The planes simply had to be empty. The buildings, God help us, had people in them, but surely not the planes…

My 13 year old poked her head out into the family room, wondering why I had the TV on – it flew in the face of our routine. I made sure she ate and brushed her teeth – she's not big on breakfast, but I always insisted – and then called her out to the TV. "They'll be talking about this at school today; you'll need to know what happened."

Watching the first tower fall was shocking. How was it even possible that it could collapse? By the time the second tower fell, I couldn't process any further horror. It was overload.

I turned off the TV before my younger kids could see the images of smoke, destruction, papers and dust raining on Manhattan. I told my 6 year old what had happened in the simplest terms. He wanted to know how many people were hurt, and I told him that nobody knew yet, but we'd find out later.

News that a fourth plane had gone down in Pennsylvania seemed both inevitable and terrifying. All over the nation, planes were grounded; we wondered how many more would bring chaos and death.

I kept the television off, or safely on Sesame Street or Dora the Explorer, when my 2 year old was awake. When she napped, I watched more TV. I now knew that the planes had been full, all of them, and I tried to imagine a reality in which such things happened. I simply could not wrap my head around a mindset that would believe this was OK. I cried. I mourned. I heard the name of Osama Bin Laden for the first time. I learned that the plane in Pennsylvania had been kept from hitting its target by passengers. (They are still some of my heroes today.)

My children barely remember, if they remember at all, the world before planes were used as weapons, before it became commonplace to assume that terrorists can and will take hundreds of lives at once – not in a war zone, but in a country at peace, on an ordinary morning, because they disagree with our religion and our government.

I still remember keenly staring at the screen and thinking, "They have to be empty… don't they?"

Glass and Steel

I have no appreciation for modern architecture. I know this about myself. I do not like sleek, modern or dramatic anything, really. What's the point of making a building that looks like a cube balanced on one corner? The fact that you can? The fact that it's different from everything around it? I am unimpressed.

My husband, of course, values those two attributes highly. Looking at houses together is a comedy routine. He'll look at a house and wrinkle his nose in distaste. "It's so boxy and square," he'll say.

"What's it supposed to look like? A butterfly? A car?" Complaining that a house is too boxy is like complaining that shirts are human shaped. Of course it's boxy. It's a big box with windows and doors. That's what it's supposed to be. Ask virtually any elementary school child in America to draw a house, and they'll draw the same thing – a box with a triangular roof, a door, and two windows.

Dan will swoon over the balanced cube. "Do you know how hard it is to engineer that?" he'll marvel. I am not bored easily, but I am bored by trying to imagine how to build otherworldly shapes. Just make a conventional shape and be done with it, already.

Dan loves geodesic domes. He's often said that he'd love to live in one. I'm left wondering where, exactly, I'd hang anything on the walls. Where would I put the furniture, cowering in the center of the rooms? And what about windows? He once told me that if you used the right translucent material, you wouldn't need windows. It would actually be brighter than regular houses with windows. Well, OK, but light is only half of why I want windows.

Recently we got a magazine with a cover story on a new bridge. It looks like, I don't know, maybe a wing – the driving surface is fairly conventional (after all, you have to drive over it,) but the upper portion of the bridge is an elongated triangle, high and soaring at one end and tapering to nothing at the other. The article urged readers to go see the bridge, and make sure they saw it at night, too, when it would be lit. I was just thinking, "Why would anyone travel anyplace to see a triangular bridge?" when Dan saw the article. "Wow, that looks pretty cool," he said. "I'd like to see that." How did we manage to marry each other? I'm so glad most of our home owning decisions are based on finances.

When I was 19, my college fiction writing class received an assignment: describe something from the point of view of two different characters. Each should have an opinion very different from the other. It was an easy assignment for me.

You're always told, "Write what you know." I chose to center the assignment on the building I'd worked in for years, a monolith downtown. My first job was as a runner in the law firm my mother worked for. It was on first the 11th, then the 15th, floor of a bank and office building. The bank took up the lower floors, and various offices – many of them law offices – took up the rest. The building was a towering glass and steel edifice that looked black from the window tinting. It was modern and impressive, and I never really liked it.

One of my characters was a young man, a newlywed. He saw in the tall, shiny black building a symbol of progress, hope and strength. Everything that was right and good and wonderful about his future was embodied in that building. The other character was an elderly man, a veteran. He saw it as a sterile, impersonal, uncaring symbol of a society that was the same. This man knew that progress leaves people behind, that the bottom line is always money and not human beings. I got an "A".

You tend to identify most with the characters whose experiences mirror your own. I was young, I was engaged; on paper, my first character should have been me. Instead, I was the old man; wrinkled, walking with a cane, invisible to passersby, memories of a long ago battlefield unconsciously coloring his world. I wrote both of them well, but the old man was the one who held my opinions.

I'm at a loss to explain why so many museums are so frightfully modern, so Buck Rogers. I love museums, but I love the inside. I tend to think the outside should be old, weathered, stone, that they should show some age, for goodness sake. The most beautiful museum exterior I've ever seen is the Museum of Man in San Diego's Balboa Park. I absolutely swooned over the darned thing. Back in the days when photos took film, and you had to make it count every time you pushed the shutter button, I probably shot an entire roll of film on just the dome. There must be some reason things speak to a person's soul, but whatever the formula, that did it for me.

There's always the shorter, less poetic opinion. One of my sisters once watched me decorating my house or yard – I don't remember which, or what I was using. I just remember her chrome and glass sensibilities being offended as she queried, "What is it with you and old, ratty things?"

Profound Alienation

Ah, the deep and profound alienation that comes from never having been young, yet living in a youth obsessed culture.

When I was nineteen, I had an argument with my friend Tim. Tim and I have always loved each other and rarely understood each other. I can't recall what he had either just done or was planning to do, but during a visit to my apartment, he said, "I'm going to be so embarrassed by this in a few years." Now, however, he was giddy about it.

You know the annoying kid who stands there yelling at all the other kids to get out of the makeshift go kart, rocket or whatever else they've built, because they'll hurt themselves? That was me. Tim was the kid who'd be building the vehicle and perching it on top of a steep hill.

"If you know it's stupid, and you know you're going to be embarrassed by it, why do it?" I wanted to know.

Tim looked at me as if the answer was obvious. "Because you have to do things; you have to experience life."

"And that means being stupid?

"At our age, yes."

That kind of thinking undid me. "That is the most ridiculous, age discriminatory thing I've ever heard!"

"Discriminatory? How do you figure?"

My turn to look as if things were self explanatory. "Because if someone older, like our parents, said that being our age meant being stupid, you'd be furious. You'd be telling them how wrong they were, and how hurtful it was to assume that we are idiots just because of our age. I know you would, because I've heard you do it."

"That's different."

"It is NO different!"

As usual, we argued for a few more minutes before we decided that it was just best to either change the subject or walk away. It was not the first, or the last, time we'd look at each other and say, "How can you think that?"

Yes, Tim is still my friend. I wasn't kidding when I said we loved each other anyway.

Meryl Streep, when asked how she felt about turning 40, once said, "Like I finally fit in my own skin. I was never young and fresh and dewy." I thought, "YEEESSSS!!!! Someone else 'gets' it."

As I finally started to fit into my own skin, my peers looked at themselves and said, "Who is this, and how did they get so old?" As 40 loomed, I wrote the following essay. I didn't say so, but I was wondering if there would come a time when people my age would understand me and vice versa. Five years later, I don't think so. I'll probably get in trouble in a few decades in my nursing home. Some man next to me will put in his teeth to say that he still feels like the high school quarterback, and in a fit of pique I'll beat him with my cane.

**************************

I'm sure that growing up the youngest in my family affected the way I feel about age. When you're constantly told that you're too little for this and too young for that, you wish in vain for the day when nobody says such things to you. It was especially frustrating when my older sister told me I was too young for something, and I pointed out that she hadn't thought so when she was my age. Her response was, "That's because I was too young and stupid to know the difference." It was maddening. She was all of 3 ½ years older than me – which, actually, was part of why she was so contentious. I wasn't seen as competition by my much older siblings, which was nice.

Part of it, too, was my parents' ages. On the day I was born, my dad was 56 and my mom was 36. My dad retired when I was eight months old. My mom turned 50 when I was in junior high. I knew they were older than my friends' parents; especially Dad. I just didn't think much of it. When I did, I usually found it odd that my friends' parents were so young. Sometimes, someone's grandparents would be younger than my dad, and I was puzzled. As a kid, your sense of "normal" comes from what you see every day. My dad was retired, my mom went to work, and I was an aunt in fifth grade. That was normal for me.

I'm sure my mom's attitude affected me, too. Mom is immensely practical and not given to vanity. Her age did not bother her, at least that I could see. She never lied about it, never complained about it, never obsessed over lines on her face. She didn't wear makeup or dye her hair. When her mother sent her Oil of Olay moisturizer ("because of that harsh, dry climate you live in,") she rolled her eyes and hardly ever used it. Near as I could tell, she didn't think about her age much. It simply existed, like the sky or the mountains.

Dad, on the other hand – Dad was terrified of aging. Part of that was fear of death. The thought of death absolutely undid him. He believed that your existence ended at death; no heaven, no pearly gates, no hell, no reincarnation – just nothing. That was unsettling in itself, but I don't think it wasn't the real issue. He'd been a coal miner, a railroad engineer, a police officer and a fireman – not exactly low risk occupations. When he talked about his years in law enforcement (which he seldom did in front of the kids, deeming the subject matter way over our heads), he would say that the two most dangerous calls were domestic disputes and bar brawls, with traffic stops being a very close second. Officers died all the time on those routine kinds of calls. He himself had had to face down men holding weapons on him. I learned about breaking bottles and using them as a makeshift knife from him. As a fire fighter, he'd been one of only two men willing to run into the burning jail and unlock the inmates so they could get out. I don't think risk or fear of dying was a really huge issue for most of his life. Of course, the older he got, the more it was, and I only knew him as a senior citizen.

The really big issue in aging for him was being helpless or irrelevant. He'd been a high school jock, a big man on campus. As an adult, he took on testosterone soaked jobs; jobs where he was physically strong and relied upon, jobs where he was often armed, jobs in which he alone was often the difference between life and death. Then, in his view very suddenly, he was no longer employed, overweight, slow, much weaker than he used to be. It scared him. Now instead of the rescuer, he fit the roll of victim. He began to fear that younger men could and would beat him up. He feared mugging and assault. He feared that someone would break into his home. He feared being seen as a target. He also feared that now he was just another old man, with no contribution to make. He felt invisible and unwanted. The depth of that feeling leads me to believe that as a young man he had been scornful and dismissive of weak old men, because he now thought that everyone saw him that way. He was angry and afraid.

In my mind, which always distills things down to their simplest (sometimes oversimplified) form, the equation looked like this: Mom + comfortable with aging = happy; Dad + fear of aging = sad. Now which, I internally asked, do I want to be? Simple.

On the other hand, being bright and analytical, I knew that getting older didn't mean that all my worries and problems would disappear. I knew that advancing grades meant harder work and more responsibility and that being an adult meant work, taxes and lots of bills. I was puzzled by kids who would say, "When I'm an adult, nobody can tell me what to do anymore! It's total freedom!" Oh, sure, I'd think; nobody can tell you what to do except for employers, lawmakers, law enforcement, the DMV, your landlord, your doctor, the city council, your bank… plus, you'll have to buy your own food and place to sleep." That sort of thinking made my adjustment to adulthood easy, but alienated me from my peers. I was accused of being "a downer," a pessimist, and raining on the parade. However much they like me, my peers have usually felt that I don't "get it."

I never felt invincible, either. I was convinced death was just waiting for me around the next corner, from the age of about four onward. A lot of that is my dad's influence, I'm sure. He feared that we'd die every time we so much as had the sniffles or stubbed a toe. Being rather sickly had an impact, too. Many of my childhood memories involve being home from school, swaddled in blankets and clutching a tissue box, watching game shows on TV. Strep throat was reliable companion that never gave up on me for too long. I also remember having garbage cans next to the couch and next to my bed, because we knew if I had to throw up, I wouldn't make it to the bathroom. I remember getting food stuck in my throat and being unable to breathe. Once, I started to lose consciousness. I actually prepared a will when I was about 16. I suppose if I'd been robust, and Dad would have been more relaxed, I'd have felt immortal. Maybe not. Anyway, I'd hear adults talk about how kids felt they'd never die, that they could never be hurt, and I'd think, Ha! Fat lot you know! Then I'd meet kids who felt like that, and wonder what the heck was wrong with them.

I formed most of my opinions about life by listening to what everyone around me had to say, sorting and sifting it by the number of people I heard it from and how reliable the source was. I hear that most people need to experience things. I'm a vicarious learner, I suppose. It's actually served me very well. I could look at other people – say, my older siblings – and decide what to do based on what worked for them. I rarely had to make their mistakes. Plenty of my own, sure, but not the same ones I'd watched someone else make. I was never an "it'll be different for me" person.

When I was a kid, most adults seemed genuinely startled by how old they were, and how old other people were. I'd wonder if they thought aging just happened to other people. It was like being surprised by the sunrise to me. It happened all the time. It looked predictable to me. Some of that was youthful arrogance, I'm sure, and some was simple math. Two years was a fifth of my life, but adults tended to own socks older than I was. Two years is no big deal when you're 50.

I have a harder time understanding it now that I'm the adult. I'll be 40 soon. My friends are now the ones being surprised by how old they are, and how old other people are. I still don't get it, and it's alienating. I never know who's going to bite my head off if I introduce them as "an old friend." (Yes, it's happened. "I'm not old!" they'll snap. What is the politically correct term, "friend of long standing?" I met most of the most vocal "not old" friends when I was a teen, so "childhood friend" isn't accurate. And I'm now old enough to have friends of two decades or so that I met as an adult. If I can't have "old friends," what can I have?)

No, actually, that's not the whole picture. People started being surprised by how old my kids were when I was barely out of my teens. Again, it made sense to me. I hadn't been a teenage mother or anything. I was twenty years old and married when my first child was born. I was twenty-one when my second was born. I had a husband, a mortgage, and a new mini-van we were making payments on. This was what I expected out of adulthood. Hadn't the older generation kept telling us when we were in our teens how we had to grow up and be responsible? Well, I was! Why did everyone find it so startling? Why did people, old and young, think I should be partying until I puked with other people my age? For crying out loud, kids are told all their lives to grow up, and now I was a grown up, and I was acting like it. For years, I didn't even wear jeans or T-shirts anymore. I dressed like a middle aged woman, wearing those ridiculous "housedresses" and elastic waist pants. Not together, at least.

I understood older people looking at me and my kids and being surprised. These were the same people who'd told me all my life how I was getting so BIG, it was just amazing, and could never remember if I was in second or fifth grade. I was unprepared for people my own age to find my life so foreign.

When we moved back to the town we'd grown up in, I went back to the theater company I'd worked with before. They were university based, but the company was open to the public, so there were people of a variety of ages. One day in a rehearsal or a meeting one woman kept bemoaning her twenty-fifth birthday. She felt so OLD, she howled repeatedly. "It's awful!" "A quarter of a century!" After a bit of this, I said, "Oh, knock it off. I have no patience with people who feel old any younger than seventy."

She was not fazed. "You're just mad because you're a lot older than me," she said smugly. I gave her a look I hope in hindsight wasn't too withering and said, truthfully, "I'm twenty-five years old." She paled.

"But, I thought you had, like, kids and everything," she stammered.

"I do," I told her.

"But I thought they were like, older and everything." She was looking more distraught all the time.

"My oldest is five." She looked even paler. It had not occurred to her that I could be her age AND have kids – especially ones who were "like, older and everything."

I could not understand why people my age were still being largely financially dependent on their mom and dad. Or why they were still moving from rental to rental, with roommates. Or still debating what they wanted to be when they grew up. When would they realize that they were grown up, and get with the program, I wondered. The older adults, the ones who'd wanted us all to grow up, seemed to be fine with this extended adolescence. Worse, they viewed my life with worry. It was maddening. They feared that any day, I'd decide that my youth had been wasted, dump the husband and kids, and backpack through Europe. OK, stranger things have happened, but anyone who's known me for longer than a few hours should know that the likelihood was slim to none. I hoped that getting older would fix this incessant worrying by others about my life.

It has, in a few small ways. Nobody tells me I'm too young to be having kids anymore. In larger ways, though, I'm still out of the loop. I snapped at a friend not too long ago, someone I've been close to since childhood. She was discussing the teenage tendency to drink too much, drive too fast, take too many drugs and the like. She made the mistake of saying, "Well, we all went through that stage." Had she not known me as a teen, I wouldn't have been offended, but she had. She'd known me since I was 12. I barked at her, "NO, we ALL did NOT." She did something else that maddens me, and sighed, saying, "Well, not you, but most of us did." I hate that. But I guess that anybody who started reading AARP literature at 25 can't quite expect to be the norm.