Things I Will Remember about the First Week of my Twenties:
Supposedly, this is it. This is the Golden Era, the official bridge between awkward adolescence and an even more awkward adulthood. This is the start of an era that they write Buzzfeed articles about, an era where you’re not yet old but not quite young. You’re in med school or grad school or no school at all. You’ve started your first job or your first marriage as a trophy wife. You’re living in your first house with white picket fences and 2.5 kids, or have moved in to your first luxurious mansion and are mentally preparing yourself to birth the occasional (and maybe-maybe-not accidental) legacy-baby-heir. This is a transformative decade. This is a decade that, supposedly, you will fondly reminisce about when you’re eighty and Alzheimer’s-free (because, let’s face it, by the time we’re eighty, one of us will have invented the cure). This is a decade you’re supposed to describe with adjectives such as ‘transformative’ and ‘spectacular’.
I am now a week and four days into this decade. And from this week and four days, these are the things that I will remember:
- I read a non-textbook, non-assigned-reading, for shits and gigles during the school year. This has not happened since middle school. Given, it was a short story that was 41 pages long. Also given, it was not merely for ‘shits and giggles’, but for the purpose of getting myself out of a very, very deep rut. And just maybe, I did not choose to read this of my own volition. Just maybe, a certain concerned (and perhaps slightly exasperated) friend emphatically insisted that this was a magical story. And just maybe, he was right. Maybe it was because of this non-textbook, non-assigned-reading that I dug myself out of this rut and finally garnered just enough motivation to make through a quarter of the textbook, assigned reading I was supposed to do. Maybe, in the remainder of this weekend, I’ll do the other three-quarters of it.
- It is most definitely possible to tip $2.40 on an $80 bill. Horrendous service does exist and it is actually a lose-lose situation for all those involved.
- I finally admitted and accepted my sociopathic tendencies. This is confirmed by the online quiz that I took while I was trying to not do work, as well as by the weird degree of sympathy and affinity I felt towards Amy, the crazy psychotic bitch that is the wife in Gone Girl. The fact that no one believes me means that I am probably (unknowingly) a fantastic sociopath.
- Watching movies about sociopaths is significantly easier when you can comfortably clutch the bicep of the person sitting towards your right, and also mooch off his popcorn. But in between watching the scene where (spoiler alert) Amy slashes Neil Patrick Harris’ throat and feeling the awkward popcorn kernel you have stuck in your teeth, you notice the way his laugh is an indescribable deep chuckle that sounds like the sputtering engine of a lawn mower (this is a compliment, I promise). You notice the way he lets you go first when your hands awkwardly reach for the popcorn at the same time, the way he truly appreciates cinematography and thinks about the plotline and is genuinely mindblown at the end of it, and the way he humors you when you, as a result of watching a movie about sociopaths, are convinced that something will emerge from the shadows and decapitate you somewhere between the theater and the T stop. You notice how you laugh whenever he laughs because it’s great to see him happy, and because it’s even greater to hear the sound of the sputtering engine of a lawn mower in the midst of a cold, dark night. Only after that do you notice the love handle that has surely materialized because of the disgusting amount of popcorn butter you’ve licked off your palms, or the way your contacts are uncomfortably folding in your eyes because you got to the theater too late and had to sit in the front row and tilt your head up at an awkward angle to see the screen. And after noticing all of that, you almost forget about whatever demons or sociopaths are hiding in the shadows.
- There are people (including said person in #4) who still play board games. This is endearing, and it makes you want to play Candy Land just one more time.
- It is indeed possible to consume the equivalent of two entire cakes every day for six consecutive days and not immediately develop diabetes.
- It is also possible to consume a quantity equivalent to two months’ worth of dining hall food in one night, especially if you are with your friends in a particularly tasty restaurant with plates upon plates of free food in front of you. In fact, this can be done at an alarmingly fast rate when this free food shares the same ethnicity as you; it is also possible to do this without vomiting or too much constipation.
- Speaking of medical illnesses that do not exist, my thyroid is normal. This was the conclusion reached after a particularly incompetent nurse tried to find my vein with the needle rather than palpation. It was invasive and ineffective, and now I am bruised to a point where it appears that I am a heroin addict with very poor aim.
- Things happen when you don’t expect them to. Things happen quickly. While this philosophy seems to apply to #7 frighteningly well, I’m going to leave this one vague. This will either be something that eighty-year-old future-me will remember with great clarity, or will want to forget entirely (I will not make a crude Alzheimer’s joke here).
- I have friends, and I will not forget them. It’s quite the shocker to realize this, to see it tangibly in front of your face when you open the door to your room and there are multiple persons standing in the dark for a surprise party that your roommate and best friend somehow planned entirely without your knowing. The natural response, of course, is to scream at said roommate and best friend that they’re little shits because emotion – especially of the positive variety – is difficult, and you’re feeling too many feelings at the moment. Because here are the people you love and love you back, and you’ve spent such a long time searching for these people. To see them all gathered for the same purpose – to celebrate your existence – at the same place and same time at a school like this, where everything has to be iCal-ed and GCal-ed to the minute, is probably the best gift of them all.
In sixty years, I will not remember that I have neither watched nor attended lecture for half of my classes since the first midterm I took several weeks ago. I will not remember what I ordered at that restaurant with the horrible service, nor will I remember exactly what movie I was watching. I won’t remember the board game, but I’ll remember how it felt to be launched into my childhood, even if it was only for the briefest of moments. I won’t remember the calories I consumed or the bruises on the inner creases of my elbows, but I will remember the people who got me through each moment.
These may not have been the moments I expected, the outcomes I hoped to occur, or the wishes I desperately wanted to come true. In fact, these may not have been things that I consciously wished for at all. But evidently, these were the things that I needed to experience during the past week and four days, and somewhere down the line, it will all make sense why things had to happen the way they did.
And thus begins the second decade.