The other night I was working and my friend asked me what my favorite ice ream flavor is. Out of the 30 flavors we have this is pretty tough. I'm actually not a huge ice cream guy to begin with, but I told him my favorite is butter pecan. He shook his head and said "Jesus, your already 60." He proceeded to point things out about my character to illustrate this, like my love of sweaters, the fact that i whistle when I walk, that I read on a saturday night etc. He may have a point, I do have somethings about me that are usually reserved for an older man. The thing that ages me the most: my contempt for change.
I am huge on tradition, and I always have been. I like to do the same thing on christmas eve every year (watch The Family Stone and have a fire in the fire place), I often ordr the same things at restaurants and sometimes I almost get sick when I hear there will be a new person at a family dinner (like a new husband or step-child), not because I'm anti-social, but because it's just not they way its always been. In this way, I am a lot like an old man, and should probably retire.
But there is also something else that that takes precedent over fear of change, and that is passion. My passion gives me a vitality that I am sure will never age. For instance, today I had a bad day. It started at 6:20 when I stepped outside and realized my car was gone, towed to the tune of two hundred dollars for parking in a lot that my roommate has parked in everyday for 4 months, i got towed after day 4. I was livid. part of not dealing with change well is that I also don't deal well with unplanned events. For some parts of the day I could almost not breath because I was so mad and so anxious about the bill. But something happend 6th period. My kids came alive with a new topic, that was honestly, on the border of being beyond them. I was teaching them how to read with a specific lens, for instance historical or linguistic. This is a skill most people do not learn until college, but i think it's relatively easy and extremely liberating. They latched onto it, and before I knew it they were analyzing the book in a way that mimicked a college environment. I mean obviously their points were nt ground breaking, but for an 8th grader to say "well I think the main character doesn't trust anyone, and if you look at that from a psychological lens i think that probably has something to do with her mom having a breakdown when her father died." BOOM. For the next couple of periods I interacted with kids on examples like this and not only could I not stop smiling, but i didn't worry about my car or my wallet once.
One of my favorite scenes in a movie is in Benjamin Button when they are laying in bed and Cate Blanchet asks Brad Pitt what's is on his mind. He looks at her with this heartbreaking calmness and says "I was just thinking about how nothing lasts, and what a shame that is." This scene gives me chills, because I think it gets to the heart of why I hate change. It scares me, and sometimes hurts me that things can't just stay the way they are. Because sometimes when I don't see my friends as often as I used to, a new face is at the table of Thanksgiving or that girl who doesn't leave my mind might start to change hers- I often worry that I'm not going to make it. That a big piece of me is so wrapped up in who I was, that I can't see who I might be. But for a couple periods today, none of that mattered, and that's how I know I'm in a good place..
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