old

I'm no different than anybody else.

This time I mean it as a compliment.

Tonight my friend J.R. was in town. Rather than getting together with me to record a Star Trek podcast, he decided to send word out to all our friends from high school to meet up. It was pretty much exactly like a mini high school reunion (which is fitting because nobody invited me to the 15-year reunion).

I kind of didn't want to go. I didn't want to feel ashamed for letting myself get out of touch with everyone and I didn't want to be embarrassed about acting like a high school student ever since high school. Amazingly, I found catching up with people exhilarating. I may not be as anti-social as I keep telling myself I am. Strangely, I'm the worst with family members and old friends than I am with anybody else.

One of my friends has a daughter in middle school. The daughter was there too, as her mother spoke to us about running into her high school boyfriend after high school. She asked us (in front of her daughter): "Should I let my daughter have a steady boyfriend when she's a teenager? I don't want to say she can't. I did, but I obviously know it wasn't a good idea NOW."

For some reason I'm at a loss for words with this story. I've typed and deleted several things now. I keep making it sound like my friend is a bad mother, but I know she's not. I think it's wonderful that she's honest with her daughter like that. I think it's most interesting that she doesn't enforce her rule not because she's a pushover and not because she doesn't believe what she says about the right decision at such a time. I think she just relates to her daughter too well to enforce anything.

At some point, we stop getting older. We certainly age, but part of the misery of aging is getting older bodies without the maturity that comes with them. Sending a kid to college will probably be the oldest I ever feel in my life, if that ever happens. I never thought I was ever old enough to go to college myself.

I only think it's fascinating because I find it far stranger seeing my friends try to relate to their kids than I find my siblings relate to their kids. When my friends say they're winging it, I believe them. When we're all together like that, we're not parents (definitely not me, of course). We're high schoolers. None of us have it together. And nothing cheers me up more than that.