Mon, 05 Jul 2010 3:10p.m.
By Erin Gallagher
About a year ago I was rudely and abruptly made aware of my impending mortality.
I was at university for a semester, enrolled in a paper while still working fulltime, and was idly loitering in the uni café - like all good uni students do - when I overheard a group of gaggling just-left-school girls complaining about the number of adult students in their classes.
“Why do they, like, even bother going back to uni?”
“I know, like, hellooo, they’re old and stuff. Shouldn’t they be thinking about retiring by now? Or, like, be housewives?”
“They’re, like, soooo annoying. Did you hear that woman today? What an arse-kisser, answering all the questions like she knew everything.”
“Yeah, totally. Like, I would be way too embarrassed and stuff to go back to uni if I was 25 or older. Like, shame. Get a life people.”
“Totally.” *flicks blonde hair over shoulder and applies pink lip gloss*
Wow.
The 26-year-old me had just been described by a cluster of 17-year-old Barbie rip-offs as an adult student.
I am turning 27 in just 83 days. Fortunately I look much younger than that. I’ve always had an issue with growing old, but I’m not one of those people who smoked a billion cigarettes before I was 12 years old and ended up looking like a grandmother aged 20, so life isn’t all that bad.
It’s just that sometimes I do feel like the train ride of life is chugging right on past me without slowing down so I can jump aboard and enjoy the ride too.
I am three years older than my brother. Always have been, always will be. And until I was about 19 everyone knew that.
However, one day, as if Gandalf had come along and snapped his scrawny time-warping fingers, everyone – from perfect strangers to people who’d known us all our lives – suddenly thought that the roles has been reversed and Paul was much older than me. Neighbours stared at me incredulously whenever it came up in conversation.
Yes, you have known me all my life. No, our birth certificates have not been forged.
These days it’s a given: because Paul is a million times more intelligent than me, can have in-depth political conversations with perfect strangers, has a pile of books in his room that I can’t reach the top of standing on my tip-toes, and likes to cook with unusual ingredients. I am dubbed “Paul’s younger (read: less mature) sister.”
I still get asked for ID everywhere I go. The only time I’ve NOT been asked for ID when buying alcohol was in my hometown of Wellsford, but I think that’s more because the bottle shop employee wanted to get back to his text messaging than me finally looking like I was over 18.
I’m the first to admit that I’d like to be like Peter Pan and never grow up.
I knew it was never going to work with my ex-boyfriend when I got so excited about an incredibly immature t-shirt that I wanted to buy on TradeMe. It was so cool; white with different colours and materials quilted all over it that made up a picture of hills and clouds and sheep and other general amazingness.
Instead of humouring me and encouraging me in my youthful enthusiasm, an enthusiasm I like to think of as quite endearing and perhaps cute, my ex told me I needed to grow up and act my age. I cried. I didn’t want to grow up. I just wanted to buy this awesome tshirt.
Well, I didn’t buy it, and to this day it contributes to one of my biggest regrets of my life so far; allowing a person to define me by who they think I am meant to be.
I think there’s a big difference between being immature and ignorant on one hand, and choosing not to take life too seriously on the other.
Life is too short and valuable to just sit around and grow old. And despite a ridiculous number of my friends making extremely mature decisions at the moment – marriages, babies, houses, more babies – and the fear that I could potentially be left on the shelf and miss out on doing those extremely mature things, I’m quite happy to enjoy life and see what comes of it while living vicariously through other people.
At least I don’t have to go home to a pile of nappies and mortgage payments.
What I’m reading: The Twilight series. Just to see what the hype is all about.
What I’m watching: Definitely not the Twilight series – those kids are too emo for me!
What I’m looking forward to: a trip to Mt Ruapehu, perhaps followed closely by a trip to Rarotonga.
What I’m dreading: how much it’s going to cost me to fill my car up this week.
What’s made me happy this week: Pump classes at the gym. I think I’m turning into a bit of a Pump addict, actually.
What’s really annoyed me this week: having the flu. Go away achy body and stuffed up face.
NRL Tipping Score: 61, with most of Week 17 still to go.