This Is Only a Test

Whatever happened to the days of yore? Yesteryear? The good ol' days? The days when the biggest problems were not bills or work commitments or the thought of settling down, but if our parents were going to let us stay out later than midnight. Or better yet, how were we going to sneak out if our parents didn't let us stay out. I've had some fun times, really fun times; though nothing can quite be compared to the summer following my senior year of high school. Maybe it was the sweet sense of release from the confines of high school and soon the confines of a small town that made us act so crazy. Or maybe we were just kids with summer lust in our eyes and fearlessness in our veins. Probably a mixture of both. Was it a good idea to do what we did? Well, it wasn't a bad one. Staying out all night and racing home before certain old men would appear at the highway diner for their morning coffee. Hanging out with rogue out-of-towners who were labeled as taboo and in someone's word, 'icky'. If you've never drank beer in a pasture, if you've never ridden on a couch in the back of a pickup down main street, if you've never found it so easy to find cheap entertainment, then of course you can't relate. If you weren't part of the summer of '99 then in no way can you relate.

I miss that summer. Partly, I miss being a lifeguard, which is the best job for someone as lazy as me. I miss my friend sleeping on my couch, us waking up hungover just to make it through work so we can stay out all night. I miss doing things that looking back now makes me feel old. Makes me think, how did we ever survive, why are we still not that crazy and fun? It's the confusion of becoming an adult that I would trade in for those carefree days. I liked the petty drama of will he/won't he call when I was 17, but now it's plain exhausting. The whole question of, 'What am I going to do with my life?' is endearing at that age, but now there should be some kind of answer forming in the brain. I'm right there on the edge, trying to balance it all out, the part where I want to be a kid and have fun and say, "I have plenty of time to figure it all out' and then the other part that pressures me to settle down, look down the road ten years and plan for the future. And, the balancing sucks.

So, what is the answer? You can't get memories back. You can't relive them though we would like to try. There is no going back and feeling sad that life is moving on with or without us. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "Don't put off until tomorrow what can be done today." However, I say, that's exactly what tomorrow was made for.

Another day to try to figure it all out.