Nostalgic in her 20s.

"In our artificial civilization many young people at twenty-five are still on the threshold of activity.  As one looks back then, over eight or nine years, one sees a panorama of seemingly formidable length.  So many crises, so many startling surprises, so many vivid joys and harrowing humiliations and disappointments, that one feels startlingly old; one wonders if one will ever feel so old again."

- Youth and Life, by Randolph S. Bourne (1886-1918)

I turned 24 last month and something sort of crazy happened.  Everything shifted. Right beneath my feet.  I don't think anyone around me could have felt it.  But it was there and I wonder if it's happened before but I was too young or too wrapped up in the madness of adolescence to see it. 

But this one I felt.  

It wasn't some epic moment, but several tiny little realizations flickering past me forcing me to realize that I was seeing things slightly different.  I was feeling slightly different about myself. 

But it was better.  Everything got a little clearer.  The fog lifted just a bit. 

I suddenly felt miles from my teenage years.  I saw some kids skateboarding on the street as I drove past and they were suddenly a completely different generation than me.  And it wasn't necessarily nostalgic.  I didn't want to jump out of my car and buy a Slurpee with them and sit on the curb.  I know all the people I would want to do that with were driving around like me.  Thinking about bills, kids, and real life. 

And I'm not sad about that.  Suddenly I wasn't reminiscing or going over every single decision i've made for my life thus far with a big What If tacked to the end of it.  I was excited.  Excited to watch my friends fall in love.  I felt excited to get to watch their lives unfold and to share the huge moments that our 20s will afford us.  I want to watch them fall in love and see their bellies grow with life.  I want to have big backyard BBQs with our kids running around while we have another margarita and talk shit about our youth, books, love, and our kid's swoon-worthy pediatrician.  

We're driving full-steam ahead to our late 20s and (gasp!) 30s.  We're suddenly not the kids anymore.  When you say you were born in the early to mid 80s, it's not that recent anymore.  The 90s have been past us for almost 10 years. 

How is that possible? How are we starting to feel the weight of time when it was only the argument of all those people so much older than us.  We didn't hear them when we were running around, drinking Slurpees and sitting on curbs with nothing but time on hot summer days.  But now we're the ones talking about it, feeling it, laughing at the whole idea of a quarter life crisis.  Some of us are racing through degrees, getting married and starting families, sweating our way through the grunt work of our chosen careers, falling in and out of love, chasing our bliss through cities not far enough from our high school, or maybe still sitting back wondering when the pieces will fall into place into the picture we thought we would see by this point in our lives.  But we're all there, smack dab in our 20s, nostalgic for a time that is suddenly gone.  

I think about that youth and I remember thinking that the 90s would never feel so archaic.  They would never feel as far away as the 80s or (gasp!) 70s ever would.  And then I look out my car window (mind you the AC is running full blast because i'm too old for 90+ degrees) and I see the youth of now.  And feeling as far from them as I do, I'm able to separate myself and find the differences in my day and theirs.  

We were some of the last to know what it was to just play outside.  We spent summers riding bikes, playing kickball, and living with the politics of our neighborhood society of kids.  We stole kisses, chased ice cream trucks, ran through woods, and found shapes in the clouds.  

We were the first to figure out how to use computers and weren't impatient with dial-up.  We begged our parents to let us have our own screen names on American Online and didn't have junk mail clogging our inboxes.  When we got that Super Nintendo we were all over that racoon tail and watching Mario fly and then that N64 and it's 4 controllers were the big leagues.  Mario Kart is still our favorite.  We recorded songs on cassettes from the radio.  We remember buying our movies on VHS and that it was kinder to rewind before sending the movie back to Blockbuster.  We passed notes, created slam books, and lived without cell phones.  We made friends, shared and exposed secrets the old fashioned way without Myspace or Facebook.  We took pictures, without getting to delete them,  before getting them developed by the oily faced kid at the grocery store.  We fell in and out of first love the organic way---face to face.  

And yet we lived in a time of excess.  We were comfortable.  We were sheltered.  We grew up before September 11th and we can feel those changes right in our bones.

We were the last ones to feel that safe.  To have the luxury of being that disconnected.

I would ask if you remember it all, but I already know that you do.   

"The song must be beautiful or they wouldn't sing along
And if sometimes the kids all seem a little sad,
it's 'cause they're saying goodbye to the youth they think they had...

I remember on the sidewalk when I bike up to the hills
You singing in the headphones as I told you that I will
That song again in the alleyway takes me to my door
I'll be back for more, I'll be back for more."

-"14 Forever" by Stars