Compartment 14B
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Why yes, I am Methuselah. 2004-01-05 - 9:46 a.m. I have spent much of my social life as the youngest member of the tribe. I was the precocious young�un amongst my elders; sassy and too big for my britches. When I was at university hangin� with some guys discussing what they�d be doing post-graduation, they turned to me and said, �Hey Shawna, what�re you doing next year?� to which I replied, �Well, if things go to plan, I�ll be entering second year.� Blink, blink. �You�re Frosh*!?!� It�s true I didn�t have that shiny new Frosh patina that the others in my Frosh-only residence did. I can�t really put my finger on what gave people that look. Maybe it�s the freshly-scrubbed faces and recently-shorn hair. Maybe the look was a combination of slightly glazed-over, over-whelmed, yet gangly and eager and excited to be there, as they wandered, looking for their next class on a larger-than-the-red-brick-schoolhouse campus. Maybe it was the fact that many of them went slightly wild when they got there, out from under their mother�s eagle-eyes and their dad�s roofs, drinking themselves silly and staying up as late as they wanted, even on school nights. Whatever it was, I didn�t have it. Maybe it was because I�d had a lot of older friends. Maybe it was because the first time I lived on my own had been two years earlier when I was sixteen and I got it all out of my system then. Perhaps I�d had the equivalent look then and it had worn off, much as it did by the end of the first semester for most of my dorm mates, who had mostly adopted the urbane, seen-it-all-and-it-didn�t-kick-my-ass look of the veteran university student by Christmas or at the most by the end of first year. Through highschool, through university, and even into real-life after that, I remained, often, the baby of the group. Then a funny thing happened. My friends started pairing off and settling down and I saw a lot of them less often. I continued going out but with the remaining single friends that were my own age. And then they too, paired off, settled down, drifted out of the city or out of the scene. So I continued to go out dancing, but the people I met, on average, became even younger, younger than I. Now, I love to dance. I could probably fill an entire entry with how much I love to dance, so I won�t go too into it here. The bar I found to dance at, which became almost my weekend second home, was full of a variety of people, of different ages (from much younger than me to much older) and backgrounds, who were unpretentious, tolerant, and didn�t like mainstream dance schlock. It was at this bar that I met my match, literally. J says he noticed me the moment he walked into the bar. J is three years younger than I and unlike me, he has always been one of the oldest members of his long-standing social group. You know what this means � now that we�re a unit and have started to integrate into each other�s groups of friends, I have become THE OLDEST member of his group. When they talk with dread of turning 30 and how old that will feel and how scared of it they are, they remember that I�m 31 and shoot me glances. They tease me, though not maliciously, about my age from time to time. And there are occasional other reminders about the age gap which, though not significantly large in the grand scheme of life, is still a fact. At the wedding, when my friends were much more apt to mingle with people they hadn�t met before, or seize the microphone to share stories during dinner, the photographer (who was an acquaintance of mine already) noted aloud that, �Yeah, J�s friends are younger than yours, aren�t they?� by way of explaining the slight difference in the social style of the two groups. You know something? I miss being the prodigy. I liked people marvelling at how young I was to be doing what I did, to have accomplished the things I had. While I�m used to people thinking I�m younger than I look (I�ve been genetically blessed in this respect) I�ve never spent a significant amount of time with people who make me actually feel old before. It�s not deliberate on their part; it�s just, I guess, the slightly different way many of them seem to interact with the world that makes me aware of the fact that they�re definitely younger than me. Ironically, the one who I notice it least with is actually the youngest of the bunch, who is also the one I interact with the most. Perhaps it�s because she seems older than the others. Hm. Perhaps she seems older than the others because we have a lot in common and similar personalities? I wonder if I�ve been attributing the differences between me and the others to age when it�s just that our worldviews are different and I don�t have a lot in common with most of them? Look at that, an epiphany right here as I�m writing! Well, at any rate, if I have to be older, perhaps I can shoot for being the wise one that offers guidance to those that have accumulated less experience in the areas I know something about. Maybe I should start calling them all Grasshoppah� *Note: I don�t know if American universities still use the word freshman to denote someone who�s in their first year, but in Canada, at my university at least, the term is the more gender-neutral Frosh. And it�s used as both singular and plural; you can have one Frosh or a bunch of Frosh.
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