It might not be apparent in looking at me now, but I used to
know exactly what was going on. Why, I remember being 18 years old and being
absolutely convinced that, for instance, not only would I never gain weight,
but I would never ever have bad breath, stretch marks, or cellulite.
I would never spank a child.
I would never be caught up in the work-bill-work-bill cycle.
I would never know – personally or Biblically – a Republican.
Since then, of course, I’ve gone to do/be/do/be/do, in the words of Frank Sinatra, all of those things.
I’m not ashamed. I’ll do it again! What are you looking at?!You don’t know me!!
Or maybe you do. Because I suspect that I am quite commonplace in some of these confessions…
Love, for example. Oh, you shoulda asked me about it years and years ago. I knew all about love! I knew so much I could yammer on about it for absolute hours!
And now?
Now I’m aware of how very many variations of love there are.
And not just the physical variations that would have been at the front and center in my youth. (Please see earlier post on my dirty mind. Thank you.)
And how about my recent bout with technical inflammation? You know, the one where my computer starts making ridiculous demands (Disable my cookies! Reboot me! Let me show you how to get discount pharmaceuticals delivered to your door in a plain brown wrapper!) and eventually slows to a pace designed to make me think of taking up subsistence farming and checking into all this fuss I’ve been hearing about the Mennonites…
They’ll have a place for me, won’t they?
It’s funny. In a stretch of unpaved reality just north of the Mobius strip, I’ve come to realize the more I know, the less I understand, and the more I understand, the less I know.
It’s making me dizzy, just thinking about what I thought I knew, what I used to know, and what I don’t know yet...
And so I’ll stop.
If at 40 I realized how ridiculous I was at 30, just what kind of realizations will 50 hold?
Maybe it's best I wait on the speculation there.
I'm still pretty sure I know what's going on.
I would never spank a child.
I would never be caught up in the work-bill-work-bill cycle.
I would never know – personally or Biblically – a Republican.
Since then, of course, I’ve gone to do/be/do/be/do, in the words of Frank Sinatra, all of those things.
I’m not ashamed. I’ll do it again! What are you looking at?!You don’t know me!!
Or maybe you do. Because I suspect that I am quite commonplace in some of these confessions…
Love, for example. Oh, you shoulda asked me about it years and years ago. I knew all about love! I knew so much I could yammer on about it for absolute hours!
And now?
Now I’m aware of how very many variations of love there are.
And not just the physical variations that would have been at the front and center in my youth. (Please see earlier post on my dirty mind. Thank you.)
And how about my recent bout with technical inflammation? You know, the one where my computer starts making ridiculous demands (Disable my cookies! Reboot me! Let me show you how to get discount pharmaceuticals delivered to your door in a plain brown wrapper!) and eventually slows to a pace designed to make me think of taking up subsistence farming and checking into all this fuss I’ve been hearing about the Mennonites…
They’ll have a place for me, won’t they?
It’s funny. In a stretch of unpaved reality just north of the Mobius strip, I’ve come to realize the more I know, the less I understand, and the more I understand, the less I know.
It’s making me dizzy, just thinking about what I thought I knew, what I used to know, and what I don’t know yet...
And so I’ll stop.
If at 40 I realized how ridiculous I was at 30, just what kind of realizations will 50 hold?
Maybe it's best I wait on the speculation there.
I'm still pretty sure I know what's going on.
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55 comments:
You are nearing complete enlightenment, my friend. The fact that I am not sporting a purple mohawk now shows how poorly I could predict my own future when I was young...
Good for you. Personally, I don't have a clue, but then, I've got a few years on you. I'll wait. You'll catch up.
So life is a Mobius strip, having only one side, yet we keep passing the same points over and over again. Oh, wait. ? That's a question.
At 50 I realized I don't have a damn clue. About anything. Ever.
Sigh.
a dirty mind? hope springs eternal!
;-)
By then you will forget what you forgot and remember all sorts of ridiculous things unless your rememberer is broke too :)
Hey Pearl! I predict three things. 1) Cats will assume total control, and we will be utterly redundant. 2) Total enlightenment: you will evolve to a point where you are certain of absolutely nothing. And from this, 3) True, final, unshakeable love will finally find you. This could still be your year! =O Roth x
I imagine, you will at very least, know much much more about socks by then.
All right...just STOP!! Your last paragraph basically sums up the introduction of my soon to be published (self)
"I Used to Be Stupid"
Hopefully it will be as good as your posts.
Cranky Old Man
"In a stretch of unpaved reality just north of the Mobius strip..." I'm not certain, but I think you just described the road I live on. The wonderful thing about being my age is that I have come to discover I know next to nothing, and it's become so much easier to say, 'I don't know.' Liberating, it is.
So, how do you look in a bonnet? That might be a determining factor.
I'm sorry. I tried to read the entire post, but I just couldn't get past the fact that you can remember being 18.
It just keeps getting better - or is it that my memory keeps getting worse?
Rolling up the pants legs and pulling on my boots. Its getting deep in here.
Shelly, and surprisingly, I AM sporting a purple mohawk. :-)
Delores, Yes, please. Wait for me!
vanilla, I am pleased to say that I will not be taking any questions this year. I'm too dumb. Ask me when I'm younger.
haphazard, come sit next to me, then. :-)
R., I am the dauphine de double entendre. :-)
comedyincrisis, my rememberer is in the shop, but my forgeterer is in full swing...
Indigo, I pray you are right. :-)
Amy, oh, well done. And when I know about the socks, I will know about life!
joeh, I am pleased that we have this in common. I should probably go home and go to bed now. The day is complete. ;-)
Teresa, I was thinking of your neck of the Minnesota woods when I wrote that. Well, not really, but it works, doesn't it? And a bonnet? I'm quite fetching in a bonnet. :-) Actually, I'm not sure I've ever worn one, but if we're going to be joining quaint little religious sects I suppose that and the buttoned-up underwear are part of the package...
Mitchell, ah, but I do. Everyone wants to be young again, but no one remembers the hormonal sense of urgency and the utter conviction of it all, even when proven wrong. It's fun and dangerous when done correctly. :-)
jabblog, either way, it works for me!
Simply, hey, while you're out, do they have White Castle down there? It's almost lunch time... :-)
the older i get, the faster i get older. and the more i realize the vastness of my own cluelessness.
Sherilin, oh, well said!
One thing I didn't know when I was young was it's all going to be alright in the end
I know now that it always is: even when it isn't.
She said cryptically....
No Whitecastle here.
Hey! while I was out you all decided to have a Pearl Party. >8(
Just have to just jump in here anywhere and say:
I thought we were s'posed to gain wisdom as we age. Turns out we knew it all when we were eighteen and now there is so much to know that we'll never figure it out. I'm with Teresa Evangeline--"I don't know" is so liberating. But I'm passing on the button up underwear--we'll not literally---at least not yet. I'm not THAT old!
i'm 49 - and i'm scared. :)
oh the 50s weren't so bad. I shed a lot of things at 50...unfinished craft projects, expectations, tolerating mean people, roles. the 60s now, I just have one question. where did that old lady come from?
Macy, you have no idea how much I want to have a beer with you right now...
Simply, no White Castle? What do you eat when you're drunk?
Leenie, I can understand that. "I don't know" sounds liberating.
TexWisGirl, get someone to hold your hand on your 50th. :-) And DON'T go to an antique store...
ellen, I suspected as much!!!
The 50's are pretty good, actually, but you won't realize that until you are in your 60's and then it's too late.
I think you'd look great in a bonnet but I rather not see you in button up underwear.
Intriguing post! Main thing I noticed getting older --especially, now in my 60s-- is I got very polite in dreams, opening doors for figments, thanking monsters for behaving, that sort of thing.
Now that I'm (clearing throat) older, I realize that I wasted so much time trying to ensure that my later life was smooth. Now that I'm here, I wish I had spent more time just being...
These are the best days! I'm actually happy to be "older."
"I’ve gone to do/be/do/be/do, in the words of Frank Sinatra, all of those things"
that there are the words of a genius!!
I know ~
Think young, act silly, talk to yourself. In your 40s they'll say you're fun, 50s goofy, 60s senile. Who cares what THEY think? Your last breath will come out as a wise crack.
That's how it goes, isn't it - we're pretty sure we still know what's going on and then bam! we're in a nursing home :)
If you figure out what is going on will you please summarize it for me and tell me which parts to care about? Thank you.
"stretch of unpaved reality just north of the Mobius strip" this is suc ha wonderful phrase I am tempted to steal it, Pearl.
Great post.
In my 70's now, I say with the soldier on Stalag 17 (or was it 16? or18?)"I know nothing". All that certainty I had as a teen-ager, wasted. Or maybe...I just know new things, wiser things?
I think Shakespeare said it best (pompous I know) when he had Hamlet put down his friend Horatio with, "There's a universe in what you don't know." What a burn. But in my case it's true.
Whoa! The "stretch of reality just north of the Mobius strip" really got to me...like, are we talking quantum physics here?
These days, having achieved an age whereupon a blissful semi-senility can be worn as a protective cape and be relied upon to cloud my judgement on a daily basis, I take solace in the in the knowledge that I don't have the slightest clue as to what it is that I am actually responding to.
So there!
*sigh* I USED to know EVERYTHING. Now I don't know much - but I have to carry on the charade that I do in order to maintain my "alpha" position in the house...otherwise the guys will take over and *shudder* we KNOW they don't know anything.
i know less and less every day. sounds like you're having the same enlightened awareness.
the less i know, the more i see
love
love
kj
Hey! I'm a Republican! You know me! But not in the Biblical sense! So. Um.
The more I know, the more I wish I never knew. How does the song go? "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."
In my 60's now, and I look back and wonder if I enjoyed being an expert. Of course, now I figure the only thing I am an expert in is watching and musing...well, at least the watching part.
Ah Pearl. What's this? You're over eighteen? Heck, if I owned a liquor store and you walked in to purchase some intoxicating beverage, I would be insisting on picture ID!
And yep 50 is the new 40 and 30 is the new 20. Which makes me wonder what that makes a 10 year old...
See ya later, eh...
I'm outta here :)
I think you just defined wisdom, but what do I know. When I was young, I was sure I would hold my stomach in when I got old. Now I just don't care that much.
Having cracked the 70 barrier, I'm a lost cause - especially since I've managed to file you name and address in such a safe place, even the day after, I CAN'T FIND IT AGAIN?! Take pity on me, and resend? I've ordered a cardboard tube which will allow the postman to deliver you picture unscathed - eventually - once I get my act together. ♥
I can't wait to turn 50. It wiLL mean several important things to me, but most of aLL it wiLL mean that I now have a time machine and can go backwards.
I'm with mybabyjohn/Delores. These days I don't have a clue. The difference is that I know I don't have a clue.
having just come another year closer to staring 60 in the face, i ain't saying what comes next but your right on track, Start lining up a good source for the old faithful smoking stuff..soon enough Pearl, Soon enough.
By the time we figure it out, we just don't care anymore.
I'm happy enough knowing that I don't know everything and never will.
Where exactly is this Mobius Strip??
Life is most definitely a Mobius Strip! It keeps taking us back to places we said we'd never go again... Silly us!
By 50 you'll be so smart your brain's weight will cause your head to slump to one side... :) Good writing, Pearl
I love the fifties! Every morning I wake up to a brand new life. And new friends and acquaintances who look somewhat familiar . . .
What is it were supposed to be knowing about please?
I have thought of your post today and something just keep coming back to me. A REPUBLICAN, Pearl, a republican in a possible carnal way. Say it ain't so Pearl, say it ain't so.
At 50? You know me.
And you love me!
And I wuv you too!
We're all riding the #10 of life, Pearl.
xxx ooo
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