Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me who goes through these little phases in life. Sometimes I feel like I’m on top of the world. I walk into a room and crowds part, men open doors, women ask for my ID when I try to buy a glass of wine.
And usually I’m oblivious, chalking it up to the world being in perfect alignment or something cosmic like that. Like the time I went to Las Vegas to visit my sister who was a blackjack dealer at an upscale hotel. I never gamble, but I indulged in the name of sister bonding. My game that weekend was roulette and I was winning. I bet on black, and when the little rolling ball stopped and I saw that I won, I’d jump up and down and do a little cheer. It was a fun game. That is, until the roulette dealer said aloud, “They’re going to be mad upstairs about this.”
Then my sister quickly ushered me away.
“But I’m winning,” I protested.
“No. You’re really not,” she said.
“But he said …”
The she gave it to me straight. “Didn’t you notice you were winning even when the number you were on didn’t match the winning number?”
“I thought it was like craps with a bunch of ways to win,” I said.
“What about when you bet on black and the ball was red?” she said.
“Perfect cosmic alignment?” I asked doubtfully.
So yes, I enjoy those lucky phases of life from time to time, but then there are the other phases. The not so pretty phases. The phases when no one buys you a drink or even notices you are standing with your order ready, waving a credit card in the air. The kind where nothing goes right and everything gets on your nerves.
That’s the kind of phase I’m in now. On the lunar cycle I don’t know what it would be: A new moon? A crescent moon? A bent-at-the-waist-pants-at-your-ankles full moon? Whatever this phase of life these last few months, it hasn’t been pleasant.
There’s something very wrong these days. I’m definitely not old, but lately I’ve felt like I’ve been taken over by a 72-year-old, conservative male, who very clearly doesn’t care for what’s going on in the world. This has made me cranky and irritable in a very third-day-of-forgetting-to-femscape kind of way.
I wake up every morning—in that I open my eyes and my mind starts working clearly—and for a brief moment I’m 21, ready to devour the world like a freaking crazy-eyed tiger with ADHD. Then I try to move and remember I’m not any of those things.
“Not a tiger. Not 21. Just crazy,” my middle-aged bones sass back at me. Still, that doesn’t make me old. It just makes me ibuprofen-dependent.
But lately, I’m catching myself thinking how I was so damn cool when I was young, which is now officially half-my-age-ago. I was confident, (or overconfident) my muscles would flex on command, instead of strain and tear at the slightest hint of a sneeze.
“Oops, sorry, just a sigh? Well, two weeks of bed rest anyway, my bad,” isn’t an uncommon conversation my body has had with me.
And most surprising of all, I used to be open-minded. Now I can’t decide whether my mind has closed or the world has just become so weird. For instance, I really hate it when I’m at a stoplight with my windows down, and some idiot pulls up beside me and doesn’t bother turning down the radio or rolling up their windows. Almost every time this happens the person is playing a song sung by someone who feels it’s necessary to divulge the explicit details of how she or he prefers to have sexual relations. Dude, I have four kids, I don’t need the instructions, thank you very much.
Social media bothers me. I can’t stand the self-righteous façade of courage that people show on social media that allows them to spout the stupidity they would only previously have been brave enough to say at their own dinner table. I know this because that veil of courage drops instantly when you see them in public and their thoughts on the world suddenly get politically correct. I’m a frank person, my close friends speak frankly, and we all know where we stand with each other. Fakers, I don’t know what to do with you, and it’s unsettling.
Kids these days. Yes, I’m going there. (I told you I’ve been hijacked by a crotchedy old guy). Do people even bother with discipline anymore? I have kids. I have three boys and a stubborn-headed daughter who, even in her 20s does the exact opposite of what I say, every, single, time. So I know that kids have their own minds and make their own decisions. But when a kid drives up and parks in the no parking zone at the ATM—after I, and everyone else took the time to park legally—gets out of his car leaving the windows down and his sex instruction music blaring, and cuts in front of me to withdraw his little $20 bill to take his date—to where? McDonald’s?—that’s just the result of bad parenting. Did actually parenting your child become uncool and I didn’t get the memo?
I also hate it when people come to a full stop at a roundabout when there are no other cars in sight. Or else they get mad at you and speed up behind you when you merge into the roundabout even though you left a big enough space cushion between you and that car. Why the aggression?
Obviously, it’s just me. The world can’t be going through a rude, cantankerous phase. So I guess I’ll just sit on the sidelines and wait out this weird grouchy old person phase until I can get back to I’m-the-luckiest-girl-in-the world phase again. Maybe ibuprofen will help.
Editor Shelly Cone isn’t always a grouch. No really, she isn’t. Send her some fun words at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 3-10, 2015.