NPR and the Yard

As Happy and I were driving in the car on Tuesday morning, I had this concrete memory of a moment in the car with my dad when I was in high school. 

You see, Happy was in the backseat complaining about NPR, imploring me to put on music.  This was exactly what I would be thinking when my dad would pick me up from my job at one of the mall’s department store (where I sold those triangle-labeled, zippered leg Guess jeans that were all the rage). 

And, so, just as we were coming around the curve next to the mall movie theatre (the same movie theatre where I had met my 8th grade boyfriend, unbeknownst to my parents, kissed him during that Cher movie Moon something, and then dashed across the street to the mall to feign that I had been there all along; only to later discover that in the dashing across the street, my glasses that I had been hiding bounced out of my sweater pocked and got run over by a car.  This story is the one I will tell Happy one day when I am stressing the value of not lying to your parents), I had this thought, “You are old when you listen to NPR and care about the yard.” 

Fast forward to today when my two year old is so over NPR that he’s hollering for music in the backseat, and my mind flashes back to my dad’s cherry red Mitsubishi Cordia and my teenage mind being bored beyond measure with the idea of an adulthood stuck caring about the news and the yard.  Twenty years later, I care deeply about the news and, yet, I can barely muster a look towards the yard.  I want to care about the yard.  It’s something I think I should care about.  I just can’t do it. 

Anyway, I posted on my Facebook wall about the NPR and the yard and getting old and all that and that sparked an interesting discussion that I thought I would bring here because it was so fun there.   So, here’s the question:

What did you think made one “old” when you were young?  And given your standards then, are you “old” now?

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