Not long ago I was teaching a bunch of 9 year olds how to knit. I don't know if you've seen 9 year olds knit - but they get things pretty tangled sometimes. I told them that when that happened, what they needed to do was hold their knitting up in the air and let it dangle and untwist, just like when the phone cord gets twisted. Eight pairs of eyes went BLINK.
"But phones don't have cords," one little cherub said.
"Er, right. But they used to and what you had to do was - oh just hold up your knitting like this."
My kids think the house phone is "lame" because you can't play games on it, you can't take a picture with it, and it doesn't even tell the time. I still think the house phone is cool because it doesn't weigh two pounds or have a four inch, permanent antenna on the top and I'm not tethered to the wall! How is it that phones can make me feel so old?
I was always the youngest in my crowd in school. I went to boot camp when I was 17. I married a man five years older than I was. I got carded trying to buy a ticket to an 'R' rated movie when I was 30! I am NOT used to feeling old. I am certainly not used to being made to feel old. But recently? The hits, they just keep on coming.
My twentieth high school reunion is in two weeks. How is THAT possible? Twenty years - fwoosh. May 4th - my senior prom was on May 4th and that's the day our reunion starts. By April 28th we're supposed to have a thousand word essay turned in on what we've been doing for twenty years. Homework. On top of everything, they assign us homework! I have to write a paper - about myself.
I know. I know. I blog about myself all the freakin' time, so how hard could this be? It's hard, I tell you. Darn hard. I don't know what to write. "Tell us what you've done and how you've done it," say the instructions. Gulp. I've done lots - but mostly the hard way. With lots of making mistakes and backtracking and ending up somewhere totally unexpected. I don't want to write about that! The instructions also say we can be creative and write our essay in Chaucerian verse or in the form of a sonnet. (Sidenote: What is UP with people wanting sonnets written? Is a sonnet like the new black or something?) Oh Man. I have to write about 20 years of bumbling around and be clever about it? Think Lilymane, think. Think, think, think.
Ok, I'm thinking of writing something like this:
"But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish." -Finnegan's Wake
Joyce was clever. Very clever. So clever, in fact, that few people understand him at all (even with all the linky poohs that are available on the web nowadays) and yet all kinds of people pretend to understand what the heck he was talking about because they don't want other people to see that they are not clever enough to understand James Joyce! That's my goal. I want to write 1,000 words brilliantly describing my last twenty years and I want my brilliance to be so apparent and universally acknowledged that no one mentions the fact that what I wrote is utterly incomprehensible. THAT'S the miracle I want to accomplish. By Friday. This Friday. This Friday which happens to be the day before the race . Which I'm also not ready for. I don't feel ready for anything, despite the fact that I've had years in which to prepare!
Oh, oh, oh - and here's another fly in the ointment (eww, I hate that image - I can't believe I typed it). You may or may not remember that Sweet Hubby is recently back from 2 weeks or so in New Zealand (where his company is based). Guess who has to go BACK to New Zealand? This time for FIVE weeks. Five weeks starting the day before my high school reunion (and spanning the Ninja Princessa's birthday, the end of school, my cousin's wedding, and the first week of summer). Just take one little, teeny, tiny, itty bitty guess. (Hint: not me.)
If I were the kind of gal who was into taking mind altering substances I think I would definitely be looking for a bottle of St. Joseph's Valium for adults this morning. Heck - I'd spend the next two weeks taking whatever it is that s-l-o-o-o-w-s time down and then the next five weeks taking whateveritisthatspeedstimeupagain! Sadly I have no time machine (chemical or otherwise). I guess I'll just spend all that time whining, er, blogging.
Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment