An Awfully Awkward Age

Tweeners. I know this usually means kids caught between the footie jammies of childhood and the acne of teenhood. But I think it’s a better fit for people my age, caught between the pedal-to-the-metal, career-building, ladder-climbing (and, for some, parenting pitfalls) of young adulthood, and the what happened, whose wrinkled face is this, twixt kids & parents, how long till retirement?hood of midlife.

This meditation on midlife started when, at my brother’s nudging (the oldest brother, ironically), I finally took the Facebook plunge. Within days, I heard from two friends I hadn’t talked to since JUNIOR high, and another friend’s brother, who I’d forced to eat bugs when we were kids, for which I still say rosaries (I’m not Catholic, but he was back then, so I’m covering bases). Anyway, this techno-dive has had a very strange effect on me.

First, trying to negotiate the FB pages and their Dante depths-of-hell links to links of links, made me want to hurl a cinderblock at the monitor. Once I calmed down, I had a strange impulse to check my hair in the mirror every 20 minutes, buy Stridex pads, and wear hyper-coordinated outfits with matching tights. Then I got spitting mad all over again for that skanky dance party at Mike C.’s in seventh grade, when Steve S. spread lies about my virtue because I kneed him. And lastly, I identified even more strongly with Emily Dickenson—terrified recluse holed up on the prairie, observing the life cycles of domesticated peacocks, tucking little poems in a leather binder, out of touch with the gregarious, rancorous, busy world.

But there’s no going back, so I’m taking it slow…suspended somewhere in the twilight zone between my little “better-dead-than-red” pep club 7th-grade self, and my wandering wistful private poet of the prairie midlife self. Still, there’s something so wrong about having hot flashes and reliving failed cheerleading tryouts at the same time. All I can do now is hope my inner old lady will gently guide my inner angst-ridden teen—rearing her ugly (adorable, really) head and her unresolved issues—toward the light, giving her a swift kick over the line. Tweeners. It’s an awkward age.