I'm an Adult Now

Some of us just aren't born to run.

It puzzles me that I pay so much attention to this.  The email half price offers to party on roof top outside of Wrigley.  If I can't get front row seats why not get a party package deal to enjoy the moment with like-minded fans? No. Gotta pass on that.  All the media buzz. On the way to an appointment today the radio was playing all sorts of Bruce and I was quite happy that they were between tunes when I arrived at my destination to I wouldn’t be later than I already was by sitting in the car listening to a song I could not pass by.  “Sorry, I was already 15 minutes late getting out of the office, so a quick listen to“Spirits in the Night” wouldn’t make things worse, right?  Oh, you’re not into Springsteen.  What a shame.  Do you know I first saw him in ‘75?”  Right - that’s the way to ingratiate yourself with overworked front office people at five o’clock on a Friday.  

(Maybe I’m in escapist mode today.  It was a hectic day; hectic before it even started because we had to go through something of a Chinese Fire Drill* just to juggle schedules so I would have a car to drive to my appointment after work.**  Working out a replacement for the loyal Jeep which has reach the end of the line; the sooner the better. Need to get to confession tomorrow morning but I don’t think I can work the drill again.  All these things that require so much plotting and thinking are taking a toll.  I start to stress out; forgetting prayer and diaphragmatic breathing. Relying on my intercostal muscles for shallow breathing and flipping through back issues of Martha Stewart Living for solace.  Not good. It helps to reserve some of my thinking processes for work, rather than use them up plotting on how to get there. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.)

The eighties were a rather  a busy decade.  I don’t remember missing out on large chunks of culture but a lot must have passed me by. Part of me stopped growing in 1979.  There was a rather charming song on the radio one morning.  I looked it up on XRT’s playlist so I could put this new find on my Spotify playlist.  Oh my,  it was a big hit (at least in Canada) in 1986!  There was  the matter of the three little kids.  And I spent most of 1986 pregnant and moving households around etc.  Maybe Canadian power pop was not any priority list.  But the song rings true in 2012, makes me laugh, and is proudly on my playlists:  “I’m an Adult Now”:

Well, I don't hate my parents
I don't get drunk just to spite them
I've got my own reasons to drink now
Think I'll call my dad up and invite him
I can sleep in till noon anytime I want
Though there's not many days that I do
Gotta get up and take on that world
When your an adult it's no cliché it's the truth

I’m an adult now - that’s the way it is supposed to be  (remember that Saturday night live skit with the guy who talks about his dad having been “middle aged man” but now he’s “old man” and the son has taken on the mantle of “middle aged man”?)  I’m “middle-aged woman”  “Middle-aged woman" shouldn’t be moping about, wondering what’s happening at Wrigley Field;  I’ve had my Bruce moments.  As I have so frequently mentioned, I was there on October 2, 1975 in Milwaukee - the Bomb Scare concert.  That was legendary.  Legendary enough for a life time.***

Last week I pumped up the tunes while dusting my office.  A little rock, maybe some disco to keep up the pace.  There are some of those great disco hits (not that I was all that into disco; “Disco Inferno”? - sounds like it may have been fueled by all the awful polyester) that strike a melancholy chord.  Back in 1979, I was poor newlywed, office temping since I was pregnant and didn’t figure it was time to find my career; not cognizant of the fact that I had fallen into my vocation.  I’d hear disco on the way to work (cold rolling steel mill/clothing factory/factory that made something mechanical that I didn’t really understand) and feel a pang of sadness for the youth that I was leaving behind. Most of our friends were childless - they could still manage to love the nightlife; they could actually do the boogeying. And I was feeling left out.

Flash forward to 2012.  I’m trying to watch the 10:00 clock news.  They keep interspersing the news with clips from the show. I feel a quick, painful twinge. There’s Bruce.  There’s Little Steven.  Doing their adult things.  I’m doing my adult things.  Perhaps our adult lives will intersect again.  After all, I am past the daily diaper wash duties and pursuit of parturition. And there is a still, small part of me that wonders how it all worked for the guys we met in front of the Uptown theater on that night in 1975 and what their adult things are now. 
 
*yes, the Chinese members of the family have informed me that in Chinatown these machinations are known as von Huben fire drills

**I’m not ungrateful for the use of Rick’s car - but, the Pastor stickers left from the Baptist preacher friend we bought it from make me feel strange parking it in the Catholic Church parking lot.  When this issue doesn’t arise we keep forgetting about the stickers.  Or if I remember, I’ve just done my nails and don’t want to risk wrecking my art by attacking the bumper with GooGone and a razor blade.

***There is a bootleg CD of that concert.  Someday, when I haven’t had to send the all my available cash to ComEd, AT&T, the gas station etc., I intend to buy two copies.  One for me and one for my little sister who was my partner in bliss that night.  And who, because she was sixteen and without proper illicit ID, kept us from going out and getting loose like most of the others waiting for the theater to re-open.  Frustrating at the time, but now we may be members of an elite group of people who were there and actually remember it!