O(LD)lympics

When I was in 7th grade, my geography teacher had us do a unit on the Olympics. I loved it. It was fabulous and weird. We learned all about the luge and slalom and ice skating. It was the year that Debi Thomas and Katarina Witt were battling it out. And Bonnie Blair got me all excited about speed skating. It was fascinating and I loved that teacher. For those reasons, the Winter Olympics always makes me a little excited.

Watching it this year, though, reminds me that I'm too old to do exciting stuff like that. Of course, one of those skiers is 35 years old. But I don't know how she drags her old self down that mountain. I tried to ski once and nearly broke my legs. Little kids were flying by me with their hands making an X; they were trying to tell me how to arrange my skis so that I could stop. It was sad.

So, now I'm too old to be on "The Real World" and too old to be in the Olympics. Ahhh, the death of illogical dreams.

Crossing the Line

So, this weekend I crossed the line. First, I am now at the point at which I said that I would be finished with baby making. I've been thinking about that all year, but now it's official. I also just realized that I am closer to 50 than I am to 20. Yikes!

I said that I wanted to get my sexy back in my 30s. Or maybe get it for the first time. I'm not sure how that's going, but I do feel like I'm becoming more of myself. I just want to be sure that "myself" is not an old lady. (Although my mother-in-law brought me some wrinkle cream from a trip she took and I think I'll start using it in earnest now). Anyway, I don't have deep revelations about my life, but I do think that life is rolling on. In the right direction.

Is It Just Me?

Is it just me, or are my students really, really interested in sex?

We are working on research papers and the number of topics having to do with sex is pretty high. In particular, I have about a thousand papers on sex education. Clearly, these people want to know what the deal is, and they wanted to know by middle school. It's intriguing to me. They have such a plethora of easily accessible information, but they feel locked out and kept in the dark. Maybe they need an informed way to interpret the media onslaught so prevalent in their lives. I'm also intrigued by the number of topics on teenage pregnancy, especially the fact that many of them report bunches and bunches of examples from their high schools, and they have been disappointed with the way those cases were handled, both by the students and by the adults. There are also a fair number of papers on same-sex marriage and homosexuality, which technically doesn't have to do with sex, but I'm getting the idea that most of them are so over this debate; for better or for worse, they just think everyone should get over themselves and let folks get married.

I realize that the early adult years (or late teenage ones, perhaps) present a biological imperative to have as much sex as possible--or as The Diva noted after her biology class, "Your body is always trying to get you pregnant!"--so maybe that explains it. Or maybe I'm old and more interested in sleep. If they knew what I know, they'd be stocking up on it now, too, because it seems to me that opportunities for both sex and sleep go downhill the older you get. Is that just me, too?

For Real, though?

So, I'm watching this tell-all, retrospective-type show about MTV's "The Real World" and how fabulously fabulous the show is. I realize that I haven't actually watched this show in several years. I used to watch it religiously, and in the back of my mind I thought that I'd be on it one day. Since everyone has to have a "character" on this reality show, I'd be the innocent Southern belle with Malcolm X tendancies. I'd spend my time regurgitating brilliant ideas from all my thoughtful, idealistic reading material, and my roommates' eyes would be opened about race and gender and the beautiful contradictions of the South. I'd be angry and passionate, but sweet and endearing. Some cute guy would fall hard for me, but it would be fleeting. "That girl," my roommates would say, "She's a sweetheart, but don't cross her!"

Had I been on the show several years ago, perhaps my fantasy season would have come to pass. But now, the sex-ed up, hot tub, type cast show would never have me; they've had a thousand versions of my imaginary character. It's just ridiculous and not at all real, and I remember why I stopped watching this silliness. Most importantly, though, I realize that I am now waaaayyy too old and jaded to ever be cast on that show. Now, I'd roll my eyes at the cast's whining and arguing and go crochet something.

Still, I feel a little sad that I'm no longer young and restless. My "Real World" dream is never going to happen. It seems like every twenty-something has a media presence, whether on TV or the web (I don't really envy that--I'm sure they are making dumb decisions that will come back to haunt them). Instead of those exciting experiences, I'm wondering why my 3 year old is suddenly wetting her pants 3 times in a week and being depressed because my university President just gave the most depressing speech today about the economy and the sad state of the school (and of the jobs therein, many of which will be vaporizing soon). I'll never have flat abs to show off (did I ever?) or some exotic manufactured experience of my youth. Who's thinking of me and wondering, "Where are they now?"

Anybody think there'll ever be "Really Real World"? Maybe that's the show for me.

I Hate Young People

I’ve just read a series of articles about, first, the astronomical suckiness of college students, and, second, the plethora of reasons for it. Then, I heard about a website solely dedicated to the wretchedness failures of young people and why they deserve our collective ire. I’m not so sure that I can still consider myself a young person (especially given my creaky knees and the unwelcome layer of fat showing up around my waist), but I feel offended and sad. I do, however, freely attest that there are some drawbacks to youth. Chief among those drawbacks is the way in which we really don’t know what we think we know. It’s a cruel joke of the universe because young adulthood is the time when we begin to feel that we have things figured out. We think we know how this life thing works and have a list of the answers to life’s questions. Of course, time has an (un)funny way of teaching us that there are footnotes to nearly all the answers, qualifiers that throw off our neatly drawn portraits of life. The fine print is impossibly small and young people don’t bother to read fine print anyway; they’re too busy squandering sleep and doing fun things with their flat stomachs and flexible knees. That said, being a young adult is like being a toddler. They feel the need to remind people that they are not babies and they know how to do lots of things all by themselves and don’t want your help. Then they fall down or put their shoes on the wrong feet. But it doesn’t really matter to them because they are in the process of figuring it out. That’s what young adulthood is about, too.

I’m putting my money on the fact that young people “today” are very much like young people of days gone by. They act without thinking, they pursue what makes them feel good, and they can’t see past the noses on their faces. In many ways, the stakes today are higher; sex can kill you, and there are thousands of ways to be distracted from the business of adulthood. Youtube and myspace won’t let anyone forget about our youthful stupidity. Still, it’s not okay to forget that, as Malcolm X said, young people change things. Old people don’t. The problem is that some of us are already old when we’re still young.

Don’t get me wrong, now. Young people get on my nerves, too. I wish almost every day that students would bring their behinds to class—on time—and actually complete assignments without spending an hour coming up with a sob story. I wish that they would say “please” and be grateful for other people’s time and attention. But, for me, it’s too depressing to leave the discussion there. Youth is only the beginning of the evolution. They might deserve our disgust sometimes, but they also deserve our mercy and—sometimes—our pity. They’ll get past this all too brief moment in their lives and turn into the fabulous caregivers, workers, or jerks they intend to be. It’s a process. And it’s fun to watch because, eventually, they’ll probably hate young people, too.