Thirty.

Thirty.

 

Thirty years old.  I don’t feel thirty, and in my own mind, I don’t think I look like the thirty-year-old “old person” that I envisioned myself being when I was younger. 

Thirty is not old.  And I’m pretty sure old is a state of mind, anyway.

When I was in high school, I had an English teacher who gave us what I thought was an odd writing assignment.  We had to write our own obituary.  Creepy.

I decided to take a comical approach.  I decided to be the grandma who got ran over by a reindeer on Christmas Eve.  I had kids and grandkids and great-grandkids at my house singing and playing in the yard.  Little did I know how often I would think of this assignment.  I think we were supposed to think about our futures and what would really matter when we were at the end of our lives.  What did we want to have accomplished?  Where did we want our futures to take us?  We needed to check into our priorities.  Who did we want to become? What kind of person did we want to be?

I wanted a family.  A big family who wanted to be together, singing, playing, drinking hot chocolate, and roasting marshmallows.  I wanted peaceful togetherness.  I don't remember if my career choice was even mentioned in my paper.  There was definitely no fame or fortune.

I didn't know the point of the exercise until years later.  I didn't realize that I really did write about my future self.  I wrote my dreams out in the form of my obituary.

The other day, I drove up to the store and the clerk was walking an elderly woman outside.  I waved since I recognized the clerk, but I didn't realize the elderly woman thought I was there to pick her up.  She came walking over to the van and belted out laughter when she saw that I wasn’t her ride.

“I can’t see anymore,” she said.  She just laughed and laughed because she was just about sitting in my front seat before she realized I wasn't who she thought I was. I wasn't sure what to do except insist that I have a very common van and help her back inside until her ride did, indeed, arrive.

I hope I can laugh at myself when I get to be her age.  I probably won’t be able to see, either.