- 1/3/14 11:37 am
-
The weirdest thing about life is that you get old and you don't realize it.
One day you're the kid in state college sitting next to the middle aged woman, while she studiously scribbles notes and raises her hand a million times. She clucks when the kid next to her smells like pot and just doesn't understand why kids cut class when their parents are paying so much for college. And, you know she's going home to her boring like in some suburban house like the one you just escaped and secretly hate her for it, for being boring, for looking and acting like a mom invading your college space.
And then you forget her the next semester, and live your life, doing your drugs and experimenting sexually and then you graduate and move on to the next phase of your life. You love your freedom and your new urban neighborhood and your friends, and you love traveling and you don't want to be tied down. But then you're 30 and all of your friends are married and you go to Antigua alone that year, feeling pathetic, you're getting invitations to baby showers and suddenly you get a little tired of coming home to just your cat, oh it's such a cliche but why work so hard and have no one really, just your parents at holidays, your old bedroom.
So you begin in earnest to really find a partner, really work on it this time, no more getting bored or giving him the heave ho over the little things. And, then there he is, and he's perfect and you love him and it's right this time. And one day you're sitting at a table signing your mortgage paperwork and thinking about the little surprise you have to tell him, that it's good you got the house with the extra bedroom. And maybe it's something about the hormones or the fact your suddenly responsible for another person's life that you begin to think about your own body and it's mortality and all of the stupid risky things you did with it, like that random guy in the bathroom one time I mean who does that?
And then you're 45 and your mother is dying, just like that. All of your life she was there and soon she won't be and your Dad is a little dotty since his stroke and who is going to look after him? You've been up your third consecutive night with your third consecutive child who have been passing the same stomach virus around, checking to make sure he's hydrated. You can't keep running back and forth to the city to work but one paycheck isn't enough, you could get another degree in something a little more flexible, maybe something you could do from home so you could keep an eye on your Dad and your kids, soon they will be teenagers and you know how you were at 15, the shit you pulled and thinking back how anything could have happened to you, maybe they need some supervision.
So you sit in a classroom with a bunch of children who are not much older than your oldest, and you wonder if you were ever that young? Their outlook is constructed on so little bit of life experience and they're so full of themselves their hormones, and they don't think anything ever bad can happen. You look at their smooth skin and marvel that beards are in style (beards!) and notice they have a cadence in their voice that is a little different from yours, a generational accent almost. Do your kids speak like that? You try to remember a phrase to ask them to repeat later. And the professor is talking about budget reform and its implications on social policy, and you listen to them form their opinions, incredulous but bemused. It is almost cute. Have any of them tried to purchase the family's groceries, or paid a property tax bill, or sought health care for a feverish five year old with no insurance?
And suddenly you remember the plump middle aged woman in college with the dated hair and the wrinkles around her mouth scribbling notes and raising her hand. And, inside you laugh, hysterically until you cry because you've become her, you've become the annoying Mom lady and suddenly you know how to troll an entire classroom of 18 year olds.
As a mother, I disagree...
ņemts no
http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1seqwk/nothing_good_ever_does/cdx25y c