Archives for January 2014

Last night I dropped my son and his friend at the movies. They were meeting two girls. At the movies. At night. In my mind that’s a double date. Oh my god. My little boy on a double date.

Except he’s insistent it wasn’t a date. He’s probably even right. He just went to the movies with three friends. Two of them were girls and his mother is the irritating kind of woman who puts everything into little boxes that fit her preconceived social structures just right.

It took everything in my arsenal of zen mum not to insist on phoning the mothers of the two girls , I didn’t even vet them outside the movies. In fact, I actually dropped the boys outside with firm instructions to always treat girls (and everyone else) with utmost respect and then I drove away as if I didn’t have a care in the world. In fact if I wasn’t telling you now you’d never have even guessed that I was going straight to the Chemist to check out their supply of natural calmatives.

Armed with only the boring common-or-garden variety of rescue drops, I went back into the shopping centre to wait for the mother of Little Pencil’s friend. We urgently needed to talk, as girlfriends that haven’t seen each other for a whole day need to talk, and I urgently needed to be within jumping distance of my son should he need me (which I knew he wouldn’t but I was sticking to my excuse).

As I waited for my friend to come and join me I watched the people around me. In particular I watched the people that were leaving the movies.

It dawned on me that people who go to afternoon movies are of a very particular demographic. They’re almost all over seventy. Most of them are women (a common “problem” in a society where women outlive men) and they walk slowly and carefully, the weight of age making its mark on their every movement. They no longer stand straight rather they bow to their age.

I had just let my little boy go and here I was, somewhere between the teenager racing off with all the exuberance of youth to his ”non-date” and the old women at the movies who bore the burden of way too many dates. Literally in the middle of these two lives – about 30 years away from the teen and about 30 years away from going to afternoon movies.
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It briefly occurred to me to be happy that I was still so young, so snugly in between the two ages so as not to be old (although my son would laugh for days if I tried to explain that I was as close to his age as I was to old age). I looked at these people and tried to imagine where I would be in 30 years time. I felt a little bleak when I realised that not many of them were smiling on the inside. In fact now that I recall it not many were smiling on the outside either.

Perhaps I should be giving people benefit of the doubt, maybe they had all just walked out of a movie like Philomena and they were really feeling very emotional. But maybe not. There is a certain somberness that comes with being an adult.

All the learning, maturing and developing that we do in our youth is unfettered with the stress of responsibility. All the learning we do as adults seems to weigh us down. I’m not looking forward to going to afternoon movies and coming out afterwards looking like I’ve been eating lemons and my days on earth are numbered by a clock sitting heavily on my back . I’m not looking forward to being old, although the other option is worse.

How do we ensure that we grow old happily? What’s the secret to keeping the exuberance of life as a teen ticking along when you are older ? How do we bear responsibility while still maintaining optimism? .

Maybe the answer lies in seeing a movie with a date. And not in the afternoon.

Maybe we just shouldn’t waste all of our youth on our youth.