I weighed in at an online discussion about makeup today. Someone asked what makeup item folks couldn’t live without, and I said, “Uh, gee, none of them, I guess, because I don’t wear any.” Everyone else was talking about how they dye their eyelashes (!!) or love a certain lipstick or powder or whatever, and my first reaction to reading all that was: “But how did they learn to do that?”
Now, I know that many adult (and plenty of not-so-adult) women (and men!) wear makeup all the time as a normal part of their routine. I just find it sort of weird that somehow, everyone else figured out where the apples of their cheeks were and how to highlight their browbones and all that, and that I didn’t somehow. Let me assure you that it wasn’t because I wasn’t reading enough Seventeen during my formative years. It just never took, with me. I have occasionally made an effort and gone to my local drugstore and picked up a thing of Great Lash, but after one or two half-hearted attempts (“Ow! It went in my eye again! Ow!”) it molders in the medicine cabinet until the next time I move, when I throw it into a Hefty bag and call it a day. It just seems so time consuming…you have to figure out what looks good, what kind of makeup you like, where to buy it, where to buy it on sale, how to put it on, how to take it off, how to put it on again. You know when Molly Ringwald is giving Ally Sheedy the makeover in The Breakfast Club? That’s been tried with me, my friends. Never takes.
Same with drinking. I don’t. I just didn’t ever go through that experimentation time where you’re getting drunk off wine coolers on the way to Symphonettes or spending every weekend in college doing beer bongs or whatever. I don’t even really know what a beer bong is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. I’ve never been drunk, and can count on my fingers the times I have tried a sip of something alcoholic. Some people have a hard time believing this…in fact a common rejoinder from my various peers in high school, upon learning I don’t partake, was “Yeah, but you act like you’re drunk anyway.” One summer this guy was living here in Carl’s house, and he pretty much started drinking at noon, at work, every day. He just couldn’t understand…just could not compute, for some reason…that I really was just fine with some lemonade. He would make all these fancy drinks and try to convince me that everyone has a one special true drink of the world that is their drink, and that I just hadn’t found mine yet. He would make all this crazy stuff, and I would dutifully take a sip, wrinkle my nose, spit it out, and say, ‘I don’t think it’s that one either. I’ll just have orange juice.”
Understand that this isn’t neccesarily because I don’t agree with drinking in and of itself, although I’m not a huge fan of drunken louts in any case. I think you have to be drinking yourself to appreciate drunk folks. It’s mostly because I just don’t like the taste. That’s really it.
I know that a lot of women my age are still wearing braids and watch the PowerPuff Girls religiously and carry lunchboxes. And I know it’s also pretty popular to reminisce about being a kid while still being quite young, as pretty much every other entry in this journal will attest. When I was twelve I was already going on and on about how my hometown wasn’t like it used to be. So, just like everyone else, I’m prey to some of those feelings and some of those conceits. We think the Baby Boomers are bad, yall. When we all turn forty and are still quoting Star Wars? Ain’t going to be pretty.
So I don’t think it’s neccesarily that I’m childish, but consider the following: I rent. I’ve never lived with a boy. I don’t have a credit card. I do have a savings account, but I don’t invest my money. I don’t have a potty mouth. I wear jeans to work most days. I still have the calling card my mom gave me when I went to college. Right now it seems like everyone I know is getting married and buying houses (and heaven help me when they start having babies), and I keep looking around thinking, Where are all the kids in my age group?
And you know what the really weird thing is? Most of the time I don’t even feel like that much of a kid. Like, I haven’t spent my twenties flitting around the world with a backpack, wrapping my long golden legs around someone dangerous on a motorcycle and writing equally dangerous poetry. I haven’t been dating a married man, haven’t shaved my head, haven’t lived in a commune. I don’t even have a tattoo. I drive a beige Toyota, for goodness sake. I feel pretty responsible. Pretty boring. I mostly go to work and eat dinner and go to the movies sometimes and hang out and go to sleep. I just don’t understand how I can feel boring and pedestrian and jejeune and inexperienced, all at the same time.