Between one thing and another, I never imagined I'd be this age...kind of at the same time that I thought that one lucky break could catapult me into Trend Piece America, with its fads and vague jobs in media. I'm not sure if anyone ever got to live that story(Helen Gurley Brown, maybe) but I didn't, because my birthday is also literally an accident anniversary--as the years mount, I think maybe it's weird that I've always been so anticipatory of it(although these reflections aren't really about the size of the number...29 was actually the hardest to cope with so far because whenever I gave the digit anywhere, NOBODY believed me and thought I was being Coy Lady Who Doesn't like to Give Her Age, which is, you know, the opposite of what I'm about, but also, not sure why this is a thing. I think your favorite movie might give you away one day anyway.(Too much John Hughes and I don't want an instagram...don't think I could sell 29 now!) But that actually happened with a cop when I was a witness to a fender bender that year...not like I tried to work up angst about it, but turning thirty was actually a huge relief and, thankfully, no longer funny to anyone.
Maybe 45 will be like that, too. I already am glad to be experiencing so much political and disability solidarity. I know what "we" are going to do for the next year or so, but as "me", I feel a little lost. i might decide what to do with "Somebody",but I ran out of big plans when "When I graduate. I am SO GONE" didn't happen or when nobody(mostly...there were a few exceptions) printed my attempts to write like an able-bodied person to show that I had Range(TM) Some of them were cute--I've found printouts in my dresser...thanks, Mom, but I guess I can see now why Perry White's heart didn't stop for those confections of airy wordplay wrapped around decidedly softball interviews with the occasional speck of insight that I usually didn't follow up.I wish somebody could have said the right thing to push me past all that, instead of marvelling that I was anywhere at all.
I almost died when I was born...my parents, on those few occasions when they talk about it, called my survival a miracle, but I think that made me think that there would be a point to all this somewhere, maybe even that somebody would say"Wow, lucky thing we know that girl who had oxygen loss to her brain!" or that I would have the kind of disabled life that makes it seem like mobility is for suckers...SPOILER ALERT: Nothing like this happened. Unfortunately. And I've never been to England, but I've driven through Oklahoma.
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