2007

Sometimes I can't actually believe it's 2007. And by sometimes, I mean, almost constantly over the past 10 days. I have had to pinch myself (figuratively - i'm not into that) to remind myself that I am now living in My Grown Up Years. This is what I called them as a kid, when we would sit around figuring out what year it would be when we turned 12, 16, 21, etc. It is a little dismaying to now be older than the oldest year I ever accounted for as a kid. I'm not sure why we stopped at 21, but it probably had something to do with the fact that there is nothing left after 21 to look forward to until you collect retirement at 65. And I don't think we knew that way back when. We also didn't know about renting cars at 25, or we probably would have included that as well. Helloooo, 2009.

When I was little and trying to figure out what it would be like in the Way Distant Future of My Grown Up Years, my whole life was contained in a one-mile radius. The gingerbread house where I grew up (not a joke, my family's house is a squat brick Cape Cod style house that is only lacking gumdrops and frosted edging) was less than a mile from my school and my church and the gas station, and because I am from New England, there were actually THREE Dunkin' Donuts within a mile of my house. Maybe because my world was so small, I still have a distinct memory of my first political awakening.

Age 6. First Grade.

I remember my teacher asking if anyone knew what had happened the night before, and being a brown-nosed, smart aleck kiss up, I was devastated that I could think of nothing more significant than the fact that I had a hot dog for dinner and my baby brother threw up. Of course, there is always one child in every class with overachieving, National Public Radio-loving parents, and in this case, his name was Cash and his parents were both surgeons. His snotty little hand shot up in the air - "Last night, the Iron Curtain came down."

Here is where my memory is sharpest - I laughed. Yes, as the Cold War crumbled and East and West Germany reunited and the entire world celebrated, I LAUGHED, because I was so sure that Cash did not have a CLUE what he was talking about. Who has Iron Curtains? Ours were cotton, and if they fell down, it was because they got pulled down, and that was not news, that was a time-out for one of us kids. I remember that smug feeling all smartypants brats get when another kid says something so utterly ridiculous.

Well, that feeling lasted about 3 seconds, because my teacher nodded gravely and proceeded to give us a watered down lesson about Communism (Bad) and America (Good). Because I went to a Christian school, I am pretty sure we then prayed for the souls of the Communists (Jesus + America = INVINCIBLE!). Here is where my memory gets fuzzy and I go back to being a chastised little kiss-up and drift out of politics until the morning my parents mournfully tell me that Bill Clinton won the '92 election. Yeah, the one-mile radius of my childhood also happens to be the ONE Republican enclave of an entirely blue state.

Growing up in the Ivy League Belt, and getting shown up by a 6 year old whose name was slang for MONEY made me decide that all things political were going to be my arena. Of course, I made a few mistakes along the way, especially during early elementary school and the Gulf War. I still have absolutely no idea how I got my information at the age of 7. Somehow I missed the concept that the draft was over, so I raced to the mailbox every single day after school, and anything that was addressed to my father and looked remotely governmental (i.e. pictures of eagles) went straight under my bed. One time a magazine offer came with a picture of Uncle Sam on it, and I literally.almost.died. holding the envelope. Actually I went straight to my mom sobbing, and she's still not sure where I got the idea that my father, a packaging engineer, was shipping out under strict orders from Uncle Sam. She was only 10 years old during Vietnam herself.

I'm not a political science major anymore, but I'm still a junkie for it. Joshua and I are those people who casually turn on NPR in the car, and know the names of NY Times political columnists, and check the BBC to see what's really going on, and we use Macs and shop at Whole Foods. Bleeding-heart, blue state liberals, and yeah, we also like wine and cheese, and OH GOD are our kids going to be those over-informed smart alecks like Cash (although, you could NOT pay me enough money to name my kid after it). Oh shut up - I also read People, and US Weekly, and I'm just as dismayed as the rest of the country at Britney Spears turning every night on town into a crotch shot, and yes I was surprised when Reese and Ryan broke up and as I'm typing this my damn acrylic nails are turning every word into a typo. So control yourselves - I'm not the female John Kerry.

It's weird how those little kid years, where you think about what you will be as an adult, start to shape who you are in the Grown Up Years. What if I had missed that day at school, and I hadn't laughed at Cash's outrageous statement about iron curtains? What if someone had actually set me straight, and told me there was no possible way my father was getting sent into the desert? What if I had grown up in Kansas, or California, or somewhere that wasn't 3 hours from NYC on 9/11. What if I had never flown out of the same airports the hijackers did, or what if I had NOT gotten addicted to celebrity news as a distraction from my school work (well, I think my life would probably be better for it, but anyways...) I would be a different person.

I don't really make resolutions. But I like to see how the new year MAKES me different. Just think...that retirement money won't come in until 2049!!