Hello everyone. :)
My older brother once told me, kind of in passing, that after your 21st birthday, (excluding your 30th and 40th and 50th and so on), your birthdays don't matter as much. When you turn ten, you're FINALLY A DOUBLE DIGIT! ( I remember that being a bit of a big deal, especially in Sunday School). Sixteen is a big deal because you're...well, 16. When you turn 18, you're finally legal and when you turn 21 you receive...benefits (tongue in cheek lol). Everything after that isn't as pivotal, and I'll admit that anticipating those particular birthdays fills you with a WHOLE LOT OF EXCITEMENT!
How do I feel about turning 22?
I've been thinking about this for the last few days, in great detail I might add.
If anything, I kind of feel...cemented into this "adult" role. I have the power to go out and start a car and not have people wonder whether or not I'm old enough to drive. When I look in the mirror, I feel like I look my age. REALLY. I look like an adult, and I really wish I could describe in great detail what that means. I'm a young adult yes, but I'm more adult than child. While on the point of feeling like an adult, I REALLY DO. I feel like, though 21 years and 360 days is, theoretically, a small amount of time. For some reason, I feel like I've been around for a LONG TIME. Hence the dichotomy. :)
How correct Paul was when he said, "When I was a child, I behaved as a child..."
You know the rest lol.
Implied or not, I will have behavioral responsibilities as well as obligations to society due to this new role. Does that imply I'll have to start wearing high heel shoes (wait, I already do lol) and stop wilding out? Probably. Does this mean I'll have to be a grown up? Hopefully. Does this mean I have to become a stoic and incredibly hard version of my former self? NO.
I look at it this way:
There is a film starring Diane Lane called Under the Tuscan Sun (If you've not seen it, for shame lol) where this woman is kind of on an unofficial quest to find herself after her husband divorces her. After a somewhat impetuous purchase of an Italian villa in Tuscany, she begins to meet some of her new neighbors. She runs into a very glamorous yet carefree woman named Katherine who lives this extravagant lifestyle but lives by a dogma left to her by a photographer she knew:
"Never lose your childlike innocence."
This is what I want.
No matter how I mature or grow or change, I do not want to lose what makes me so eager to take pictures of sunsets or get excited about tea parties or feel simultaneously carefree and fearless when I dance (be that on a wooden floor, brick walkway, or the comfort of my own bedroom...with the door open of course).
I'm not sure if it has taken me 22 years to figure this out, but either way I think birthdays for your 22nd year on earth are as important, if not more important, those for your 21st. I'm looking forward to the next year (if for no other reason, to matriculate) of my life, and I hope to capture the majority of it through stories, poems, and photographs. You know me, so be ready to pose!
Happy Birthday To Me. :)
Keeping the Faith and Keeping it Real,
aM
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Hi-Profile Name Promised; VERY Little Performance Given...
Apparently, a famous name is all it takes to bring in revenue, even if the task promised by said name is so minimal that the person used to open the show should have been the main attraction.
Yesterday my mother and I went to a Mother's Day Brunch, and it was absolutely lovely. The food was great and the fashion show was wonderful. However, the famous name used to draw us in was highly disappointing. It was so exciting to hear the radio advertise this famous person over the airwaves. I was so excited to see her that I squealed at my first glance.
Our star performer's preceding act was in the middle of his impressive performance when she entered the room. Even though all eyes fell on her turquoise dress-top with puffed sleeves and her spiffy haircut, her preceding act pressed on with his performance. As he hit high notes that would rival those of Mariah Carey, the crowd in that conference room of the Hyatt Hotel was very much responsive by getting out of their seats with loud applause.
When the time came for our main attraction to entertain, she made the first mistake an entertainer could make -- she admitted not being in tip-top shape for her performance. It was like saying to the audience, “Okay, be prepared for less than my best; ‘Pray my strength,’ even though you paid big money to hear me sing.”
There is a possibility that said confession on her part caused the audience to tune her out...but more than likely, it was the opening of the buffet line.
Ironically, when she opened her mouth to sing, nothing would have been able to convince me that she was sick at all. Okay. We understand you can still blow a song out of the water even though you have a "bad cough."
In any setting, especially one in which the audience is looking forward to food, it is never good to set up any "important" entertainer while people are satisfying hunger or are on the road to satisfying hunger.
Case in point: the people began to eat; the people tuned her out.
What's so sad is no one really paid the woman any attention. This is THE main attraction. Hardly anyone is paying attention, and those who are responding are doing so for those who weren't. It's like when a kid is in a talent show doing something really terrible, and in order for the kid to not feel totally crushed by the choking silence in the auditorium, his mother stands up in the middle of the 10th or 11th row and begins cheering loudly. It just didn’t work.
Though I hardly noticed, after two songs, our performer sat down. Now, my mother thought she sat down for a glass of water between sets, but when we looked up from our plates, she and her entourage were gone...never to return.
She had sung two songs though we were promised a show. We were robbed.
The show continued to include the oldest mom (96!) as well as free roses for all the matriarchs present, but it's sort of comical that the reason we decided to come didn't really leave such a stellar impact on our hearts.
I don't want to communicate that the entire experience was disappointing because it really wasn't. I met some lovely women, heard some wonderful stories, saw an incredible fashion show and ate some delicious food. However, I was disappointed, if not a little insulted. I paid for a ticket and didn’t receive the package I was promised.
I guess this means I have to find out where her opening act is playing next.
Keeping the Faith and Keeping it Real,
aM
Yesterday my mother and I went to a Mother's Day Brunch, and it was absolutely lovely. The food was great and the fashion show was wonderful. However, the famous name used to draw us in was highly disappointing. It was so exciting to hear the radio advertise this famous person over the airwaves. I was so excited to see her that I squealed at my first glance.
Our star performer's preceding act was in the middle of his impressive performance when she entered the room. Even though all eyes fell on her turquoise dress-top with puffed sleeves and her spiffy haircut, her preceding act pressed on with his performance. As he hit high notes that would rival those of Mariah Carey, the crowd in that conference room of the Hyatt Hotel was very much responsive by getting out of their seats with loud applause.
When the time came for our main attraction to entertain, she made the first mistake an entertainer could make -- she admitted not being in tip-top shape for her performance. It was like saying to the audience, “Okay, be prepared for less than my best; ‘Pray my strength,’ even though you paid big money to hear me sing.”
There is a possibility that said confession on her part caused the audience to tune her out...but more than likely, it was the opening of the buffet line.
Ironically, when she opened her mouth to sing, nothing would have been able to convince me that she was sick at all. Okay. We understand you can still blow a song out of the water even though you have a "bad cough."
In any setting, especially one in which the audience is looking forward to food, it is never good to set up any "important" entertainer while people are satisfying hunger or are on the road to satisfying hunger.
Case in point: the people began to eat; the people tuned her out.
What's so sad is no one really paid the woman any attention. This is THE main attraction. Hardly anyone is paying attention, and those who are responding are doing so for those who weren't. It's like when a kid is in a talent show doing something really terrible, and in order for the kid to not feel totally crushed by the choking silence in the auditorium, his mother stands up in the middle of the 10th or 11th row and begins cheering loudly. It just didn’t work.
Though I hardly noticed, after two songs, our performer sat down. Now, my mother thought she sat down for a glass of water between sets, but when we looked up from our plates, she and her entourage were gone...never to return.
She had sung two songs though we were promised a show. We were robbed.
The show continued to include the oldest mom (96!) as well as free roses for all the matriarchs present, but it's sort of comical that the reason we decided to come didn't really leave such a stellar impact on our hearts.
I don't want to communicate that the entire experience was disappointing because it really wasn't. I met some lovely women, heard some wonderful stories, saw an incredible fashion show and ate some delicious food. However, I was disappointed, if not a little insulted. I paid for a ticket and didn’t receive the package I was promised.
I guess this means I have to find out where her opening act is playing next.
Keeping the Faith and Keeping it Real,
aM
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