Things to Do - Contemplate Aging in Its Many Forms

Do you remember music circa the 1980s, before spotify or youtube or rhapsody? When you'd hear of a band and have to decide, UNHEARD, whether or not to buy their music. I was in high school and somehow I suspected there was more to life than what the radio played us, just as I suspected there was more to life everywhere. But how to find it and dissect it and figure it out? Everything seemed so mysterious.

I wonder if the mystery still exists for teenagers in 2012. But maybe that doesn't matter - now they can graduate high school and move to NYC and have a new roommate and a date on match.com without ever having to stop and think. i don't know if i would have been better or worse off in such a world. i don't think i would have sexed online. but who knows what stupid decisions we all would have made? I'm still glad there are no videos of me figuring me out.

Anyways, i remember the first time i heard the Stone Roses, i checked out their tape from the library, i checked out everything from the library - from Margaret Atwood to Bukowski. i wanted to see what was out there. i read Ham on Rye and Post Office. i listened to Shoot You Down over and over. I brought it to my friends' houses. I said "I've never heard anything like it. I can't get it out of my head." We saw Radiohead in a small venue downtown, my friend lost her shoe in a mosh pit, we never found it. I drank, but not that much. I read more books about other people, other lives. I went to college. I threw up in a bar toilet. More than once. I bartended. I made hundreds of sex on the beaches (does anyone even drink those anymore?). I learned which customers wanted bud and which wanted bud light. When the bar was empty I read Dostoevsky and the Bible. I moved to CO. I went to law school. I moved again. And again.

THEN . . . I married and, luckily, I married well. I moved to the suburbs. I worked, I had a baby, I was tired. I gained weight, I wore sweatpants, I read What to Expect When You're Expecting, I tried to sleep when the baby slept, I managed to sleep when the baby slept, I was happy, my husband was happy, we had another baby 13 months after the first, we loved this baby too, I bought bigger sweatpants. I worked (I can barely remember this part).

I got f**ing old. But still, when I listen to the Stone Roses, I remember that feeling - like the door is going to open. There are worlds and worlds out there and so much to discover.

Is that how teenagers still feel or did facebook take it away? And does it even matter? Maybe they'll feel something less ambiguous. Maybe they'll know who they are. Or, maybe they'll just read more Bukowski. Either way, listening to Stone Roses takes me back. Do you know what I mean?