Today's topic: Where are you in your life vs where you thought you'd be at this point?
When I was a kid, 30 was old. Like, reeeeeeally old. My mom was 30. And that was old. If you had asked me at 5 years old, where I would be when I was 30, I would have said several things:
1. Married.
2. A teacher.
3. An NBA player like my idol, Clyde the Glide Drexler.
4. Having babies.
5. Having cats and dogs. Like, ten of them.
As a little girl, I played a lot of Barbie (who, by the way, spent a lot of time naked with Ken), and a lot of baby dolls with Stace, Kitty, DeLaina, LaDonna, and Carolyn. And when we were playing baby dolls, we always had a lot of kids and a lot of pets, and of course, a husband...and were *gasp* 25 years old!!
25 was "the age to be" when we were playing. Barbie was always 25, we were always 25 in our mock households with all of our baby dolls. 25 had a nice ring to it for what defined a grown up.
The only thing that 25 year old Barbie and 25 year old fake housewife and 25 year old real life me had in common was that the amount of sex I had at 25 rivaled Barbie and Ken's. I wasn't married or popping out babies, I didn't have ten pets or a house of my own. I was in college, living with my parents, working at Old Chicago, and probably wishing I was still 5 years old.
The same is true for 30 year old me. I am single, living in an apartment (two days from now), just me and my one cat - not ten cats and ten dogs - without a house of my own with my hsuband. I don't wear high heels and dresses every day, but I have learned how to more adequately do my makeup. I still maintain a decent Barbie-and-Ken type sex life, but I have learned a thing or two about the ways they did it wrong way back in 1988 when I was 5 years old...I mean, come on, he just laid on top of her like a dead fish, and she just laid under him like another dead fish. Get it together, Barbie, you deserve better than that!
I have also somehow managed to overcome my dreams of playing in the NBA, after my mom explained to me why little girls at 4 feet tall don't generally get to grow up into 7 foot tall black men, and I realized at some point that I had no desire to be a teacher, what with all the hatred I have towards other people's kids. So you could say my career aspirations have changed since I was little. I have a career I am proud of, where I make decent money, or at least enough to support myself - for the most part. I still think I would have done Clyde the Glide proud, but I suppose life goes on.
The way I viewed adulthood as a child has clearly changed. I am proud of my single, stable, grownup Barbie life. And for the record, Barbie wasn't even as commited to Ken as I liked to think. I caught her in bed with a GI Joe once, and she definitely spent some time in my brother's room with a Power Ranger. So there's that...
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