Disclaimer: I began this on my 50th birthday in May 2013 and just found it, unpublished. I suppose it still rings true.
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For the last few weeks, I've been taking good long looks at myself in the mirror, trying to see what, exactly turning 50 would look like. I've been perusing laugh lines with a 10x mirror, checking for age spots and just generally trying to figure out how I can be 50. I don't look like what 50 did when I was a kid, and I've gone through old pictures just to check. Good living, amazing genes and lots of luck have given me this gift.
But what I have concluded 50 looks like on a much bigger scale is just this: life's lessons along the way make us all who we are, no matter what age we are. Here are a few of mine:
1. When I was a kid, maybe 5 or 6, my grown-up (2 years older) cousin, Theresa, gave me her bike when she got a brand new one. It was a cool little gold-colored one and what I loved best was the flat metal "back seat" over the rear tire. That bike is what I learned to ride on but how I learned was by sitting on the back seat where I was about 3 inches closer to the ground, leaned over the front seat and pedaled away. I wish now my dad had a Smart Phone and could have photographed that because the visual I get now makes me laugh. Anyway, one day, after riding the bike in this fashion for quite a while, my dad suggested I ought to try the real seat and even went so far as to say that if I couldn't ride it across the lawn regularly that maybe I wasn't big enough for this bike. Challenge accepted: I didn't like it, but the lesson was that if you don't try, you'll never do it.
2. When I was in grade school, I went to a 6-classroom school house, with each room being home to each of the 6 grades I attended in elementary school. The lunchroom on the lower level was a place where older students, 5th and 6th graders if I remember right, could sign up to help and if you were on the list, you got out of class maybe 30 minutes before lunch to help get ready for lunchtime. Two people would sign up together, and it was typically best friends who would do it together. I remember vividly signing up with one of two other little girls when one or the other or both of us were the selected uncool kids in the group of little girls in our class. And nearly without exception, one of us would be back "in" when the time came to do our lunch duty and we'd have to work with "her." Kids are so cruel, and this taught me, though I probably didn't know it at the time, to try to be nice to everyone because maybe they had something going on in their life we didn't know about.
3. In Jr. High, all I wanted was to be a popular girl. I had many friends but never considered myself "popular", meaning to sit at That table, or be considered cute byThat boy. So I picked a girl or two whom I considered popular and copied them, not realizing that everyone but me know that wasn't me. I was constantly told to be myself, and I became pretty alienated from many who had previously considered me a friend. The lesson, of course, was people love you for who you are, not who you might think you want to be.
4. I worked hard and had the opportunity to graduate college a year early, though I had just a few credits to earn a second major so elected to return another term. I was lucky enough to secure a position right out of college so in February of 1985, I began my career. I returned to my alma mater to participate in the commencement in May but instead of a diploma inside the folder, there was a note saying I had an outstanding balance on my account and my diploma would be held pending final payment. I reveled in the day and returned Monday morning to my job and put a check in the mail for the balance due. Cut to nearly a year later and I was called into my boss's office - he'd been told I didn't have a degree and asked me to bring in my diploma. I told him the above story and promptly called my alma mater who then told me I was a few credits short. This was all news to me, especially since my records had shown I had more than enough credits. My boss gave me 2 weeks to clear it up and I discovered that two field study classes I'd taken through a local community college had not been transferred so I got to work on that and 3 weeks later, I had a note from the registrar, showing all was well. Yep, 3 weeks - I'd been given 2 so my first career out of school was over. I'm leaving out lots of details, but suffice it to say, I learned one can rely only on oneself, no matter what the situation. I should have not counted on my college advisor nor on others along the way.
5.
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That's as far as I got back then. I had exponentially many more life's lessons but I'll let those come out in a few years.
Maybe when I turn 60.
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