Suddenlythirty

One minute you’re twentysomething, still technically part of the youth, still perfectly qualified to contribute to Youngblood. And then one day you wake up and you are suddenly thirty. Officially old.

I don’t feel any different, tho that next year im going for my big three-oh. I was telling my sis that I still have the same passions and convictions as when I was in college. The only major difference in my life really is Clara. I guess I feel more secure about myself, less shy somehow. I feel fulfilled, too, mainly because I now earn my own keep and can do whatever I want with my life. And what I want to do with my life is not even something really grand like join a nudist beach or something. Just simple stuff that my parents used to frown on when I was still living with them, like eating bottomless potato chips and chocolates in bed while I read a book or watched a movie way into the night. I’m definitely happy, but I still have a lot of dreams – like, to be able to provide Clara all she needs and most of what she wants and for her to grow up kind, happy and bright, to visit Chesnut in Cape Cod, to travel around and outside the country, to get married to my one tru love (sigh) all over again to the same guy on our 25th wedding anniversary… But these dreams can wait.

I have this private thing where I tell him “I feel three” when I feel like being a three-year old or a toddler who does something really silly and couldn’t care less about what anyone else thinks, or when something really stupid happens to me and it’s like being a kid all over again where I’m just so helpless in the face of the strong forces of the universe. I feel three when I hear some jologs song in the mall like Where is the Love or Bring Me to Life and I just want to sing along at the top of my lungs, complete with dancing and movement. I feel three when I’m putting on ketchup in my Twister fries and the whole packet just gracelessly squirts into my brand-new pastel Kamiseta top. Whenever I feel either of these two types of being three Ches would usually make some remark – which he thinks is all very witty – like “very motherly” and roll his eyeballs in varying degrees of annoyance.


Oh, I will put a stop to all this silliness and act my age soon, I promise. One of the things that really gets to me is when I see fortyish types with pencil eyebrows and hair dyed blonde, wearing tank tops and tight jeans, and you can practically hear their bulges begging to be let out of such constricted clothing. Now that’s silly. Not to mention downright annoying.

I’m another ten years away from those bulges. Or so I hope.