Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

(I might add that I did not, in fact, stay away from the elephant-ear cookies. I think I ate 6 over the course of the day. Ugh.)

I’ve been moo’ed at before. Just once. I was climbing into my car in front of a grocery store in Boston where a major road passed by. I didn’t realize until the car had passed, but the guys hanging out of the windows were indeed moo’ing at me. It was a bit easier to pass it off because I was fairly certain that I’d never see them again.

This morning, when I was wrestling some art furniture into the back of my car for travel to the sale site, three guys in a truck pulled out of the driveway next door and proceeded to hurl insults and cackling laughter and fingerpoints at me. Apparently, my fatness was threatening them somehow. Maybe it was just really funny to see the fat lady sweating in her office clothes and high-heeled boots, trying to fit art chairs into an SUV. It didn’t feel funny, but maybe it was.

I acted like I didn’t hear them. I’ve pretended that it didn’t bother me. I’m forced to confess that I’m mortified.

Today I am 28 years and 11 months old. While scribbling out the numbers 9/4/04 on some form, the thought flitted through my mind that, “Huh. In one month, I’ll be 29 years old.” Naturally, being the good, socially-brainwashed girl that I am, the next thought was, “Then I’ll have just one more year until I’m 30.”

One year. 365 days. Not even a leap-year in between to have mercy on me and grant 24 more measly hours. It occurred to me that it was very cliche to be feeling the way I did — that the advent of three-oh would mark some grand ending and some small beginning — I still did. It occurred to me, too, that when Patricia turned 30 last year, we joked about the new modern woman’s mid-life crisis which, as with everything else these days, has been fast-forwarded by a light year or two.

The honest, honest truth? My life is pretty on track these days. I know who I am and where I am going. I know what I want to do with my life, and am on track to achieving it. I’ll graduate with my master’s degree in May, and have potty trained my very own dog. Honestly, life is pretty good. I even enjoy the process of aging, feel downright giddy when I find more gray hairs, and look forward to many years of bucking the anti-aging attitudes in society at large. It certainly isn’t the prospect of being 30 years old that had my wheels turning. It was this:

The one thing I would change about myself, if I could change anything at all, is my weight. My health. My inability to go hiking and surfing and biking. That’s the one thing I would change before I turn 30.