You just don’t ask a woman if they’re 50. It’s kind of like the whole asking if someone is pregnant thing. You just. Don’t. Do it.
This created a challenge for me. I’m working in a new building with a woman named Eleanor. The only Eleanors I’ve ever known are her, the Gone in Sixty Seconds car, and this kid from my childhood. I knew the one at my new spot wasn’t the car from the movie, but could she be the one from Evergreen Elementary?
I would like to think that as I matured, I would be better able to guess ages. I’m so bad at it. Sometimes I find myself racing against people in a workout completely thinking they’re fully formed adults only to learn that they are more than 30 years my junior. Needless to say, I absolutely didn’t trust myself to guess office Eleanor’s age.
Luckily, I had some sort of random pain to loudly declare about to others. In the midst of my attention seeking, I slid in that I’m falling apart, “now that I’m…” dramatic pause for emphasis, “50…..!” As soon as the words left my mouth, I whipped my head Eleanor’s direction just in case my proclamation would lead to intel.
“I’m 50 too.” Yes!
There was an awkward moment (like I’m perpetually in) while I knew who she was but she couldn’t identify me. This wasn’t surprising or offensive, my hair is just a little more gray than in it was in 8th grade.
She asked questions to try to place me. Was I an athlete? No, but it was Evergreen in nineteen hundred and eighty-five so I was on some teams. Who were my teachers? I have no idea. It was a weird time in which Evergreen just started the whole switching classes thing. I just assumed all the teachers were mine.
I hoped she’d figure out soon who I was, otherwise I was going to be the creepy person who remembers someone from nearly 40 years ago who doesn’t remember them. I flung another identifier to my middle school existence, “I was really in to Duran Duran…?” Her face changed from confusion to a broad smile of recognition, “…..Crystal!”
I’m not proud of it, but I was obsessed with that band and it’s members. It’s embarrassing, but obviously it’s a building block for the serene indifference in which I exist nowadays (<-this is sarcasm. What sarcasm means is “the use of irony to mock”)
Eleanor went on to talk about how my mom was a memorable fixture in school participation with her attendance to field trips. This made me wonder if Eleanor hanging out with my mom in Old Sacramento, is how I was able to procure a mounted poster of the Soloflex man. He was an ad guy, for an exercise company. He was shown in black and white taking off his ribbed tank top. My weirdo self enjoyed that picture to the degree that I spent my entire budget getting a poster of him mounted to a hardboard. I carried this monstrosity on to the bus like it was normal. It wasn’t, but somehow I got away with it. Perhaps because my mom and Eleanor were chilling.
Eleanor’s and my chat led to me brining in the 1985 Roadrunner yearbook which led to more hilarity. We attempted to recreate our yearbook photos and got some laughs out of some autographs. “Crystal. We had some good timE (singular. Maybe it was a typo, maybe not). I hope we go together forever….” Spoiler alert; we didn’t.
Eleanor and I went back to our respective tasks after our fun jaunt down memory lane. I was grateful for the time machine moment and even more grateful for growing out of my awkward middle school days. Well, sort of growing out of them at least.
Thanks for reading!
Bifocals and Barbells 