A simple drive to my friend's house the other day got me thinking about how old I am. I know, I know, 19 is hardly ancient, but it's not that young either...it's kinda like "holy crap, how did I end up being 19 years old already??" That means I'm almost TWO DECADES old...definitely past the cool "oh look you're an adult because you're 18" stage, the age where you think wow I could be married within the next 6 years, the age where you have to seriously think about what you're going to do when you grow up -- er, now that you ARE grown up, halfway to middle age, and probably a bunch of other weird stepping stones of life that I'd rather not think about. And my mom always teases me about the time I was around 13 and I learned that the final Lord of the Rings movie wouldn't come out until I was 15, and I decided that 15 was pretty old. If 15 is old, what is 19?

It all started, as I said, when I was driving to my friend's house the other day. I passed the parking lot of our local Volunteer Fire Department and saw a dad coaching his daughter through -- dare I say the words? The faint of heart, please close your eyes! -- parallel parking [gasp!]. It reminded me of when I was that same girl, my dad telling me to relax and stop yelling at the stick shift in the car [oh how I loathe manual transmissions...absolutely utterly and completely loathe...and that's what I learned to drive on...*shudders*]. He should probably get some kind of award for being relatively patient and relaxed during my fledgling driving career, I know of too many parents who weren't so confident in putting their life in their teenager's hands on the steering wheel.  Anyways, that got me thinking about when I was that age [see, even that phrase makes me sound old!], sixteen. SIXTEEN. That seems forever ago...I was a sophomore in high school, and now I'll be that same year in college. Weird. And my brother, my baby brother who somehow went from being 8 to 16 in what seems like 5 minutes, will be doing that. Oh God. Clear the roads. No really, I mean clear them. Your houses might not even be safe...he's the kind of kid who in racing video games drives everywhere BUT the road. It's not safe. Even if you're 300 miles away in PA, you're survival odds are not great.

Phew. I think I just had a pre-midlife crisis...can you have those? Or does that just make you sound even older?

 p.s. do you know how many pictures of boats come up when you type "parallel parking" into Google? a lot. I wasn't aware that parallel parking boats was so often searched...