"we're never going to have a class of 95 reunion because there won't be enough babysitters to go around."

i went to the convenience store around midnight to stock up on smokable nicotine sticks, and behind the counter was a girl i went to high school with. we went to the warren county school of the arts (for theater) together our senior year, we did all the school plays together. she has two kids now; the youngest is two. from what i hear, a healthy two thirds of my graduating class has procreated. for some reason, i find this disturbing. granted, it's been six years and a lot has gone on. and it's also true that some of those babies were born immediately post-graduation, which i'm sure affects the statistics in some way.

i don't know why i find it so strange that people i used to know have kids. my mother had two by the time she was 23, but i always told myself that she came from a different era (not to mention having gone to catholic school). i suppose it's just that it makes me feel a little old. it's one thing to be 20-something and independent and doing work that i'm interested in. it's quite another to be the peer of so many people who have 'settled down' in some way. it's strange. in some ways i don't feel all that different from the person i was at, say, 18. in truth, i have about the same amount of responsibilities, aside from the large pile of debt reaching behind me in a vast wasteland populated solely with collection agents. so the concept that i could be married with children and a mortgage and all is really alien to me.

and then of course there's the realization that quite a few (i won't say most) people in my age range are starting to settle down, get married, do all those grown-up things, while my dating history is probably slimmer than that of the average high school junior. does this mean i'm still stuck in dating adolescence? (note: NOT adolescenTs.)

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so does any of this really bother me? the truth is, i never cared all that much about what the people i went to high school with were doing when i was in high school with them. i'm living a life that's finally more or less on my own terms; i'm doing things that really matter to me, and i'm enjoying it. so there.

-beatpoetgrrl

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