Mid-life Crisis, Number 63

I had to go to the yarn store today. No, really, I HAD to! Because I ran out of yarn in the middle of my husband's second sock. I know, I know, you're thinking I made this up. You are so skeptical! Here: You can sort of see the finished sock and then you can see how far I got on the second sock before it became apparent that I was going to run out of yarn.

This did not please me, as the first skein of yarn had cost, ready? this much.


Now, I realize that my husband is reading this (he is out of town) and just did the math and figured out that he will soon have a $50 pair of socks. But honestly? It's cheaper than if I remodelled the upstairs bathroom, honey. Plus, look how gorgeous the first sock is:


But ANYWAY, this post is not a sock post--I know that will come as a shock. But I had to go to the yarn store and TA DA, it wasn't raining for the first time this YEAR in Austin and people were really out and about. I saw a man walking down the street and something in his face really captivated me. I felt like I could see into his character--you know how sometimes you can feel like you know something about someone just by looking at his or her face? Because part of living a life is the character we develop in our physical appearance which conveys a bit of the internal character we develop over time.

I probably wouldn't have noticed this man but I had spent the weekend staring at the still characterless faces of my young (20) niece and my even younger cousin (17). My cousin was visiting from Germany (from where my parents had just returned after almost three months) and my niece was visiting from Midland. I know what you're thinking --worlds apart, you say? A girl from West Texas and a boy from Europe? Two ends of the spectrum, you say?

Wrong.

Apparently, the teeneage/young adult experience is pretty much the same all over.

At first I thought that maybe it's because both of them are only children that they have such egocentric world views, but honestly? I think it's really the age. And as much as I hate to say it, a lot of what builds character in our faces and our souls are painful experiences that we survive and that teach us about the workings of this ole world.

The thing is that I love these two young people and I don't WANT them to go through those "character-building" experiences yet. It's just that they are in THAT stage, you know? The world revolves around them and they know more than everyone about everything (I always respond so well to that. Because, as we all know, I really do know everything about everything.) I started thinking about it because I took them out to lunch and they talked on about themselves and as we were sitting there and I was trying not to swallow my tongue, two more sets of young people came in --all of them on their phones and sprawling all over the tables and booths (what is it about manners being a dying art these days? If you are young and beautiful, are you just exempt from changing out of the clothes you slept in before appearing in a public place?)and I heard one girl call her parental unit and say, "Can you, like, transfer $20 into my account? Because, like, I need gas. Well, like I KNOW, but I have to have GAS." (The "Duh!" was implied.) And then I read my beloved baby-sitter's blog and she had one of those "damn I'm good" posts --and she IS good, but well, that's not the kind of post that an older person would ever write.

It occurred to me that this really is a developmental stage that we go through and it's an important one. Young adults have to talk about themselves and get reassurance about their own greatness A) because it's the only topic of which they actually know anything and B) it builds a core of self-esteem that is necessary as we try to remain intact when the world starts beating us down.

Still, the future looms large as I contemplate the fact that both of my girls will be going through that phase at the same time.