Relativity

Do you ever wonder if age is really relative? I had one of those, "OMG, I'm old!" moments last night. I was talking with our friend Sharon's daughter, Taree, about a competition that her government class had competed in this semester. It happened that it was the same competition that I had participated in while a senior in high school. So, I was very excited to share how my class had won local, state and made it all the way to D.C. to compete in nationals in which we won best in the western region. It was the most awesome experience, and we were a kick ass class. We had nine valedictorians that year, including myself (I bet some of you never guessed that one!), and six of us were in this class. Needless to say, we were hard to beat. So, here I am reliving the "glory days" and the poor girl has the most patronizing look on her face. She was trying to be polite, but I knew that my experience was just too far removed from her own. How sad! To me, senior year doesn't seem to be so terribly long ago, but to her it must seem like an eternity! In that moment, I felt so old and out of touch. Honestly, I'm only a year away from my ten year reunion. ( Some of you are probably laughing at me right now, because your ten year came and went long ago!)

Anyway... it got me to thinking about how hard I try to be relevant and relatable to young people. I don't try to be something that I'm not, but I do feel that if I am going to be effective in my job I need to be aware of what young people are watching, feeling and experiencing. I'm not as good at this as I could be, but I know that I am much more "in tune" than some people I know.

Also, I'm not ready to feel "old". I know that I'm really not in the grand scheme of life. However, sometimes it's really hard when I realize that I'm not in the "young" category anymore. No, I'm in the "young family" catagory now. That seems so stupid, too, since I am not the young mommy with three small children in tow. So, what is this time of life? I'm even more displaced now that everyone around me is having children. Where in the world does that leave us? Do we just have to keep finding young, upwardly mobile people to hang out with until they decide that it's time for kids and we no longer "fit" into the social picture? There's gotta' be a welcome place for us somewhere between college entrance exams and diaper genies.

That reminds me of the pseudo-compliment which I received from one of my Jr. Highers. She's giving her own mom a lot of trouble and so one day she looked at me after a tift with her mom and said, "See, you're a cool mom.". Again, OMG I'm old; this kid thinks that I could be her mom! How can I be a "cool" mom when I don't have any children? Is that the key? Only people without kids can be looked up to as cool parents? I'd just like to gain cool aunt status! Those prospects are pretty dim, though. Sure, I think that Dameon likes me pretty well, but Lacey and all the other kids that will come with time won't be around us enough to even know if we are cool or not. We'll just be those aloof relatives in Las Vegas that never send gifts. There are only three possible ways that I see would result in cool aunt status: closer proximity (west to east coast is a big diff), providing a glut of cousins in the same age range and/or spoiling the kids to death. Unfortunately, all of these are about as probable as a cold day in Hell. My only hope is that when the kids grow up they'll feel that it is important to have adult relationships with relatives. That would be nice, but in my experience is kinda' rare. Most of my extended relatives wrote me off after I got married. Even so, I still send them all Christmas cards. (I only send to the cousins that I am currently in contact with, though. The rest can just forget it!) So, did they only like me when I was small and precocious? Oh, well. Maybe my mission in life is to love kids through the times when they aren't cute and no one has a use for them anymore. No one seems to like Jr. High kids, but I feel really awful for them. That's when they need love and support more than any other time. Whenever people ask me why I don't have kids, I just tell them that I have 130 twelve year olds and that's quite enough!