Someone bring me my jello and my Geritol.

So, I've been cast in this play, and it's awesome and the people are awesome and I play this kinda younger-than-me person who has a boyfriend, which is always kind of awkward when you shake hands with a stranger and say nice to meet you, I'm looking forward to playing your love interest - what's your name again?

But what's really awkward is when you happen to be 38 years old and your love interest happens to have not graduated high school yet. Not because he's some sort of idiot miscreant incapable of passing a GED, but because he actually still reports to homeroom by 7:05am and has PE class third period and needs to remind his parents to put money on his lunch account.

And just like that I'm Mary Kay Letourneau. Except I'm not a teacher and I probably would never be one because I can't spell worth a darn and also I hate kids. Well, not hate hate, more like I just hate being surrounded by swarms of them for extended periods of time.

Anyway. This whole I'm almost 40 and you're not even 20 yet thing just makes me feel old. And weird. But mostly old. I've been out of school longer than you've been alive old. And so it's really important for me not to act old. Well, at least not act all codger-y, anyway, but rather be seen as hip and cool.

And so the other day, while waiting for rehearsal to begin, I was sitting there knitting - because nothing screams I'm hip and cool like sitting alone in the back of a theater putting knots in yarn with sticks - and my young buck of a boyfriend came up to me and said, "Whatcha fixin'?" and I said, "Oh. I'm making a scarf." And he looked at me and said, "No. Whatcha fixin'?" and he kind of smiled and pointed at my creation and looked at me expectantly and I stared at him and said, "...uhh... I'm knitting a scarf... for my daughter...." And then he just sort of looked blankly at me and walked away.

Fast forward three days later to where I'm taking a break. In the bathroom. Doing, well, bathroom stuff. And as I reached for the toilet paper - BAM! Like a freaking bolt of lightning it hit me: He was quoting the lines from the play. He was being funny. Facetious. Because that's his line. He looks over at the mother, who happens to be doing some sort of needlework and says "Whatcha fixin'?" and that's why he said that to me and he was being funny and I was being the old lady who didn't get the joke.

And now I want to run and play catch up: I get it now! I get it now! Let's have a do-over! Then I can respond appropriately with a spunky, witty comeback and he won't think of me as an elderly, out-of-touch grandmother type.

"Knitting IS my foreplay, honey."

Comments

Tina, said…
LOL, Husband took me to the Improv one night. The comedian says: On average men think about sex every seven seconds. So I have been practicing eating hot dogs in six seconds or less.

I didn't get it, Husband had to explain it to me afterwards. But that's just being blonde, not being 44 years old.
Becca said…
I love love love that you figured it out in the bathroom. I do my best thinking in there too.
Brenna said…
A friend of mine has a stepdaughter who's 17. I walked past her and her boyfriend in Target one morning but didn't place her face immediately. After I finished my return I tracked her down and apologized for not saying hi (we'd met a few times before). Steve said, "She didn't care, and now you're just the crazy old lady running through Target."