When we are kids, we often times long to be adults, a funny thing since at the age of 10 we aren't quite sure what being an adult really entails. Then as adults, we yearn to be kids again, so much that we often perform all sorts of circus acts to satisfy the craving. I suppose that in this way, we can exhibit the same level of maturity that we had when our brains were actually still developing at the age of say, 13.
Anyway, for me as a child, it started with the typical dolls and tea parties and playing house, but lying around and daydreaming was the real pleasure portal.
I remember with sharp detail one fantasy I used to play out in my mind perhaps during brief pauses of my structured life or throughout the course of an endless summer day. The specifics really aren't necessary, but I will say that they may have been inspired by a song from the musical Annie. I always loved the way she imagined her perfect family..."maybe in a house, all hidden by a hill....she's sittin' playing piano, he's sittin' paying a bill". I wasn't an orphan, so really I just liked to imagine myself living this picturesque life. I used to think, Who knows, I might one day "sew a whole closet of clothes", as Annie so whimsically suggested.
The submergence into adulthood has been such a smooth transition for me, and how could it not be in a place like Vanderbilt? Please excuse my coarseness, but they wiped your ass for you if you let them, it was included in the hefty tuition or something. So many rich parents really want this for their children I guess.
Then came Spain, which has definitely had its stress-factors in ways that moving to a foreign country always does, but for the most part, it has surely been a pleasant experience considering I just came out of the "four best years of my life" as they say, and on top of that have had no real plan besides gettin' by.
But maybe it's this lack of plan that sort of weighs down on me after a while, and triggers a tour of selective memory...
Forget that time I had stuffed a doll stroller with my most valuable possessions and strapped my My Little Pony sleeping bag to my back...... there I was walking down the street attempting to run away because I just needed the independence, I was so tired of being a kid... all the while my mom trailing alongside in a red mini-van coaxing me to get in because otherwise we were really going to be late for parent-teacher conferences...the worst was that I was serious and didn't she realize? That was a bad day...
I just want to selectively remember things like the yellow swing in the backyard that I could see from the kitchen window if I stood on my tippy-toes, or lying on the carpeted hallway floor cuddling with the dog, or listening to Wilson Philips blasting on the living room stereo and spinning in circles until nearly falling over... in my selective memories, the future couldn't and didn't exist.
But I'm not the type to let it stress me out, I just get nostalgic, waste lots of time wallowing in this state, and then remember that a healthy dose of reality is really what it's all about, and also a positive outlook on things...
I will start to figure out my life for next year, and if not for next year then at least for the summer. Here's my logic: if I write it down, then it will happen. Until then, I will try to remember that adult life is kick-ass. Not a hard thing to remind myself of, just thinking of the little things like wise little Annie notes..
I'm an adult and I can spend all Sunday morning in bed if I want, and after I can go for creme filled napolitanas and read whatever I damn-well please, and it doesn't matter that my bed isn't made or even that the sheets are actually on the floor, because I'm an adult and this is how I choose to lead my life. Tomorrow's Monday but Mondays are cool in my book because they make Sundays possible. It's a pretty good feeling, right?
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