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groan up
05/30/2009 = 08:58 PM

It's been kind of a rough week, even though it was short, workwise.

And that's all I'm going to say about that without backspacing.

Sometimes, I'm just tired of being a grown-up.

One of my blogfriends just wrote about being mature, and I want to throw down in her defense. She has a job, she pays her bills, she maintains her household, and I don't think it's fair that she should be castigated for wanting to behave in a childlike fashion once in a while, since she is by no means childish.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.

The man who was principal when I was in high school just passed away. I always liked him. Mostly because his dealings with me were of the good-cop persuasion, while he let the provost handle the bad-cop dirty work of nailing me for cutting class or smoking in the stairwell.

I forwarded this information to Mr. O, the best English teacher I ever had, because we've been in fairly steady correspondence since he made contact with me and I wanted to offer my condolences; Mr. S was my principal, but he was Mr. O's friend and colleague.

So, today Mr. O sent me a link to Upchucky.com, which contains a plethora of great time-wasters, plus a "Music Room" with a neat collection of jukeboxes sorted by year.

The house is as clean as it's going to get. Dinner is assembled and awaiting only a time closer to 11:00 pm — I know that's a late time to eat, but That Man of Mine is working and I'll eat with him when he gets home — to have the flame turned on under it and get it ready. The laundry is put away.

I'm not done being a grown-up; I'm just taking some time to listen to the Upchucky jukeboxes and think about stuff I haven't done in a few years, is all.

It's fourteen years since I got so drunk in public that I couldn't walk straight.

It's twenty years since I cut a class and went to Eats and Sweets for ice cream or home fries.

It's about twenty-two years since I've pulled a piece of ABC (already been chewed) gum in half to share with a friend.

It's about twenty-five years since I have given a school bus driver a reason to pull over and threaten to throw me out for mouthing off.

It is probably about thirty-two years since I've pried open a maple seed and stuck it on the end of my nose to be Pinocchio.

I know it's thirty years, almost exactly, since I made a mud pie, because I was eight the first time The Mom allowed me to start a recipe from the beginning and cook it all the way through, including turning on the burner by myself. (Lemon pudding.) I didn't have to pretend with mud anymore; I was a chef.

(Mind you, I buy Dead Sea bath products now, to repair my sick old-lady itchy, dry skin, so it's back to the mud. Just not as haute cuisine.)

It is, I'm estimating, about thirty-four or thirty-five years since I cried when magician Dick Hodes "took some blue" from my dress and didn't give it back.

He later came out and "returned" it after he learned that he'd upset me. I have adored magicians ever since.

Speaking of magicians, it's Andy's birthday today.

Andy has been steadily avoiding being hit by a bus now for thirty-nine years. He has a "real job" (at a magic shop, but it totally qualifies) when he isn't telling jokes, juggling, disappearing things, eating fire, spinning plates, or doing other fun entertainment stuff.

He, like Adie, like me, does what grown-ups have to do. But Andy has also mastered the art of balancing adult responsibility with a healthy sense of prepubescent-boy silliness.

Maybe the fact that he's a boy is the reason he can "get away" with behaving immaturely with impunity, whereas Adie got called out for it, but whatever.

I'm not avoiding "adulthood" because I'm afraid of getting old. I just don't want to forget how to have fun.

Tags: adulthood

drinking: ice water, because it's good for me
listening to: Janis Joplin, Me and Bobby McGee (on the Upchucky jukeboxes)
which came out in: 1971, the year i was born