This Whole Growing Up Thing

When I was about 16, my parents had this "farmhouse" in upstate New York that we were dragged to each and every summer, holiday, many weekends, etc. Please understand when I say "upstate New York", I don't mean attractive and Catskillian, I mean an hour south of Buffalo. Enough said. Anyway, occasionally they would invite friends, and that made it somewhat bearable, especially their friend Tony, who was a cellist, and ever so faintly mad. Also a very good cook. At any rate, I remember thinking Tony was fun, but like, so immature for his age. Gawd. He was probably about how old I am now, and I was reminded afresh of something he once said after bodysurfing on an iced over pond:

"On a good day, I'm 17".

At the time, all I could think was "how the hell could anyone want to be 17 if they didn't have to be?". High school was not my favorite time, needless to say. I understand it now, though, because in my head, I'm still 19 on a good day (college was rather better for me), and it comes as a frequent surprise when I'm faced with the reality of things, which is that I'm old enough to have a kindergarten-aged child, not to mention another screaming weasel. The good news is that today, after dropping Bean off and heading back to the car, what I actually thought was "this whole being a grown up thing is actually...OK. It's kind of fun to go through school all over again, and watching my two grow up is a hell of a lot more fun than going through it myself. I can deal with this." It helps when you can take pictures of this, when they are about a month shy of their first birthdays: