Deityblog

This kid over here looks like Al Franken.
Only two bathrooms on the whole train, and no cafe service.
Fifteen college freshmen flank me on all sides.
Homeward at the end of Thanksgiving weekend.
Thanks giving way to loathing at the week ahead.
Responsibilities, uncomfortabilities, drudgery of a computer screen and forced smiles.
I work at a non-profit. It puts the non in.
We do theater for social change, like
the change in our teen audience's faces when we change their lives.
Somewhere between boredom and pity.

a kid says "where my ticket?"
Holy crap, where is this kid's ticket?
I look up--what's going on? Did one of these kids just say my name?
I like them, I wish I had had friends like them when I was in college.
They're nerdy and quirky and funny and cool. I can tell.
From across the aisle, I'm an excellent judge of character--
it's when I get to know you that I change my mind.

He found his ticket. God bless him, Little Al Franken.
I wonder where these kids go to school. What they're majoring in,
if they're happy.
If I would've been happy if my dreams of a normal college experience hadn't been abandoned and aborted by logistics and the logic of necessary evils.
My mind wanters on, musing over nonexistent roommates and a dorm life that failed to materialize.

I wonder if these kids like themselves,
and curse myself for being across the aisle from perfect post-adolescence,
careened into adulthood without taking a breath to be more stupid,
teenage, free.

Now I have to care about too many things.
I work in non-profit. I write grants.
I go to meetings.
I'll never own an Ipod Nano.

This knowledge hurts. When did I go from almost being one of these kids to being the weirdo adult writing bad poetry about them from across the aisle?

It's humiliating.
It's demoralizing.
It makes me dread the future.
I feel old and washed up at 22, because I couldn't afford the dorm and commuted to campus, because I fell in love and got married at 21, because I'm obsessed with my cats and cleaning out the goddamn refrigerator.
I'm old! I'm a 22 year old yuppie, I'm a never-was-has-been surrounded by people who take themselves too seriously.

I'm history.

I close my eyes. Open them.
Al Franken is staring at me. We grin at what the skinny kid with the pseudo-cool ripped jeans just said:
"I don't want to worry about social networking when I'm enjoying my football."

Al and I crack up. It's a beautiful moment.
Bottled water gets up my nose.
he puts the earpiece of his Ipod back in,
and I settle into my pseudo-adult sleep,
glad I don't have a paper due, ever.
Glad I can reach across the aisle once in awhile,
and that I have no business calling myself an adult.