So, about this being an adult thing, is it too late to get my money back? Do I need a receipt? I lost that around 50 years ago. Still, it’s broken and that’s not fair, right? I demand a full refund or, at least, an intense conversation with a manager. The world, from my standpoint, has become unhinged. Weather systems are in a tizzy. Humans are not behaving very humanly. The haves have too much. The have nots don’t have a pot to do the things you do with pots. And, besides all this, what happened to the things we were supposed to be doing as adults? I’ve been thinking a lot about childhood me lately. I had hopes and dreams and, especially, fears. What happened to all those things? I took a family poll, recently, by posing a question in the form of a statement. “Tell me some of the things you worried about when you were a kid that you thought were going to be huge adult issues but turned out to be 100% nonfactors.”
I was nine years old in 1976. I remember the brouhaha that was the bicentennial celebration in Seagoville. I recall a parade. I remember lots of red, white, & blue paraphernalia for sale at Smith’s Pharmacy. I also remember every afternoon of that entire year. I would go home and immediately dive into my homework with abandon, for one reason only. Gilligan’s Island came on at 4:30 pm. I was obsessed. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, my violin teacher, Blanche Little, would perplexingly ask me why I was so out of sorts. I would smile and sigh as I lovingly explained to her that I did adore violin music. It’s just that I was missing Gilligan’s Island to show her the fruits of my practice. She wondered what was so great about a silly afternoon show. “Mrs. Little, it’s the beach and the headhunters and the Professor and…THERE’S QUICKSAND!” I thought quicksand would play a pivotal role in my adulthood. Shouldn’t there have been a few rescues by this point or at least a close call? Why, I have yet to see a single mucky, beckoning bog.
My oldest son said his pivotal childhood moment that had him thinking things were surely changing forever happened in 1999. He was thirteen. Half of the country was listening to Prince explain how to party. The other half was stockpiling canned goods and bottled water, crafting aluminum hats, and converting 401K funds into gold bars. It was the year of the dreaded Y2K. Everyone agreed that we were in for the ultimate Cinderella experience at the stroke of midnight on December 31st. Computers would begin to smoke as they selfdestructed. Banks would fall. Power grids would collapse. Would we even wake up on January 1, 2000? Maybe the Mayans were right. We would ascend or just evaporate into air. He listened to the reassuring words of his parents that night, but he slept with his bb gun and his rollerblades at the ready. You can never be too Y2Kareful.
My middle child can’t believe he made it to the ripe old age of 34 with his face intact. He spent way too much time wondering exactly which of his expressions would be his lifetime representative when, not if, his face froze. Would he be perpetually mad? Would he be forever trapped with a look of confusion on his face? Mid eyeroll? Of course, this is the same kid that thought, for a very long time, the word entire was really “a tire.” Thus, when I told him I loved him more than the entire world, he envisioned Tire World – like Costco but just for tires. That’s still a lot of love, in my opinion.
My own mother, a fretter of medal worthy proportions, rehearsed a plan with me for my entire childhood. Someone she knew was related to someone who knew someone who heard this story. A woman drove during a storm. Somehow, the details are unimportant, her car tire came to a stop in a massive pool of water on top of a live electrical line that had fallen into the street and was obscured by this large lake-like formation. In her panic, she reached for the metal car door handle and was electrocuted instantly. My mother assumed that would be her fate, too. “Dina, when that happens, and I am driving, we cannot touch the door handle. We will just have to sit there, for days, if necessary, until someone comes along to hear our screams through the closed windows. We cannot touch the window roller handles, either.” My solution of making sure rubber gloves were always available was of no comfort to her. “Dina don’t be silly. The glove box handle is metal, too.” My daughter in law dangerously skirted the law for years. She assumed she’d spend her formative years in the hoosegow. Someone told her, along the way, that driving with the interior car lights on was illegal. She can’t believe she’s not on probation, still. One of the kids wondered when, exactly, my back was going to break from all the “accidental” cracks they stepped on. From time to time, I still wonder how many hungry foreign children died at my hands from not finishing all the food on the plate. Why aren’t planes and ships still disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle? Where are all the serial killers who escaped from asylums only to tease young lovers in parking areas by dragging tree limbs across the hoods of cars? Based on all the episodes of 70s sitcoms, I thought I’d have experienced a lifetime of falling soufflés by now. While these things no longer keep me up at night, I think I’d trade one quicksand kerfuffle over being an adult. Surely the Professor would figure out how to rescue me.
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