I am sitting here in the subway (okay I will be publishing this AFTER I get out – calm down I am not lying)…and just marveling how the world changes as we age.
As I got on at Finch station, I got the seat of choice and the train was blissfully quiet. I opened my aloe juice, took a swig and started reading a brand new book (because I actually managed to finish a book two days ago!!! Yay high five!).
A few stops later, two elderly gentlemen sit down near me and quietly start chatting. I immediately think – isn’t that cool that you can have such good friends at that age and can still go out and about (yes I have adopted Canadian tendencies) for a nice day out. Then I go on to thinking, I hope I am like that when I am that age….I wonder which of my friends would be willing to run around the city with me when we are old and wrinkly and grey….
Then I wonder how annoyed I would be with some random chick staring at me with a sappy smile on their face as I ran around all old and wrinkly and gray.
I am mean, so I said to myself, well that is so far away….such a long time. My entire life may be different. I may not even be in a city or country that HAS a subway.
As soon as I think that, a gaggle (yes I am calling them a gaggle) of hormonally charged, loud, hopped up on pop, excited to be free from school for the day teenagers jumped on.
My blissfully quiet train became a cacophony (see? Like geese) of screaming, squealing, laughing, cursing, gossip an sexual innuendo.
So much for reading my book.
I sat with my eyes down, every once in a while glaring in their general direction and thinking “were WE ever that loud and obnoxious?!”
My mother had told that my friends and I were indeed loud – but in a different way – apparently you could always tell where we were cause we giggled and hugged each other as we made or way around the house.
When I think of it, we did do one trip in particular during which we may have annoyed people. They had just started running air conditioned buses between San Fernando and Port of Spain and we got the opportunity to hit the the city to shop (chaperoned by a friend’s Mom who was crazy enough to think of this plan and carry it through).
We were returning from our exciting day at rush hour, so all the exhausted, after work people were trying to sleep in their way home, comfortably positioned in the new air conditioned bus for an hour or so.
Enter us – giggling and loud. My friend’s Mom sat as far away from us as physically possible (smart woman – or maybe just fed up by that point).
I didn’t realize how loud we were until people started steupsing (sucking their teeth). Then one lady shouted at all of them ‘leave them alone, they are young girls, let them have a good time….’
Bless her heart.
Introspective as I am, instead of laughing and continuing the way we were, I started thinking and looking around me – noticing people trying to sleep and wondering how we truly appeared to them.
I opted to be quieter for the rest of that journey, as did some of the other girls who accompanied me.
So, today, I looked at those kids and thought – although I cannot read in the ruckus they were creating, let them enjoy themselves…they are young and at what other stage in life do you have an excuse to be that free?
Then I sat there reminiscing.
“Remember when I was that age?”
The kids came off at the next stop. As soon as thy left and the train started again, the elderly friends to my left said to each other…
“Remember when we were that age?”
The lines of age have officially been blurred.
In a similar manner to how I mentally ‘closed’ the age gap between myself and the teenagers, the gentlemen had unknowingly done so between themselves and me.
I guess my days of being old and wrinkly and gray are not so far away after all….
