They call you M’am – nobody’s ever called you M’am – Yo, Hey You, Um – never M’am,. But you’re M’am now. You’re Thirty – you’re the age you swore you’d never get to – the age all your friends warned you about. The age where things start to wrinkle and hair turns white. You’ve already dyed yours twice – the age you need glasses. The age you turn into a ghost.
And you decided it was a good idea to go back to school – good idea to get your Masters – good idea to change your life.
What were you thinking? You were thinking dead-end job – thinking stuck – thinking life was over.
You’re going to become a Shrink. You never got your Masters. You got bored. You were having too much fun. You got married. Happily ever-after. No.
Start life over – your Exband is having his own mid-life crisis named Nancy. It’s just you now. You and a change of plans. You and classes. You in the front row. You doing this thing.
The room is full of younger you’s – the ones who stare off into space, or study the neck of the guy in front of them. The ones you used to be.
You would like to smack them – yell at them – tell them about life. They wouldn’t listen – you never listened – you always thought 30 was some strange age where people went to die. You had a 30 year old history teacher when you were their age. You never listened to him. He smoked a lot – he had yellow teeth and reeked of Old Spice. He made no sense – he wanted to get into your pants – he creeped you out.
You creep them out now – those boys who grow beards now because they can. Those boys who look past you and not at you. Those boys who call you m’am.
So you’re in the front row and you take notes – you listen – you do homework – you find out the Professor is your age – your Professor talks to you – he notices when you walk into class.
What took you so long?
And there’s KROQ, just like it was in November of 1985. Same as it ever was – Same as it ever was.
