Things I Miss About My Teens

Sweet readers, seems like I am always running a minute or two, a day or two behind. While I want to blog on a regular basis, I don’t want it to get in the way of my living life and doing things. I guess I need to set up a schedule for writing here.

Like my fellow blogger and role model Alison Lumbatis writes in her book Get Pretty, Kick Butt, available here on Amazon.com, it is important for us women to “make time to pursue (y)our interests and hobbies”.

So in working toward the end of achieving my goals that I listed here in October, one being to write every day, I need to set up a daily routine for doing so.

I will get right on that…tomorrow.

In the meantime, this post is supposed to be about the Things I Miss About My Teens. Wow, it is almost too hard to think back that long ago. Heck, that was last CENTURY! But here goes, let me try.

 

The Things I Miss About My Teens

 

• The number one thing I miss is having my dad in my life. He didn’t die when I was a teenager; he died about two and a half years ago. But I wish I could go back and be with him again as a child. Listen harder to the classical music he played on Sunday mornings. Or smell his pipe tobacco. Or ask him more about his life before being a husband and father. I wish I could go back and appreciate him more.
• Second thing I miss is being an innocent little girl living in my parents’ house in Bartlett, Tennessee. I was a teenager in the ’70s. The 1970s. The world has always been a cold, cruel place but today’s world seems colder and crueler. I miss the days of walking to my friend Sharon’s house, sometimes meeting her half way and walking back to my house or on to hers. I miss roller skating on four wheels. Riding bikes. Swinging in Elmore Park. Playing kick the can with my sister and some of the kids in the neighborhood. Cheerleading in our green and gold Elmore Park Eagles uniforms, saddle oxfords and bobby socks then going to The Fare after the games. Having supper in the kitchen at the dinner table where there was no TV allowed. Talking to my boyfriend on one of our two telephones, usually the goldenrod, wall mounted phone in the kitchen and trying to keep my dad sitting in the next room from hearing what I was saying. Having the same boyfriend drive by my house after he got off work on summer nights and I would talk to him from my bedroom window. Innocence. Just being a little girl.

 

And

 

• I guess I miss my body. Not only the thinner, better toned body of my younger years but I miss my flexibility and limberness. Actually, I could back ten years - back to my mid-40s - and feel more flexible and limber than I do now. Now days I have to worry that I might step the wrong way and twist my ankle, or throw out my back! I miss the days where I just did it. Didn’t think twice about breaking into dance or doing a cartwheel or the splits. Taking off for a run. Going for a hike. Doing a back-bend or a situp or a plie.
• I miss having dress up dates. Paul and I go on dates but we never really dress up for each other. I love dressing up. I love feeling pretty. I miss having dates where I dress up and my date picks me up and he is dressed up, too. And we go to the movies and then have dinner. Or maybe we go to the prom or the Snowflake Ball, and I get to wear a formal gown, and fancy shoes. I miss sitting in the car in front of my parents’ house after dinner and the movies and kissing. Just kissing. I don’t want to go back to kissing anyone other than my darling husband but I loved the innocence of just steaming up the car windows by kissing.

 

Yup, There’s More

 

• And I guess it would be accurate to say I miss some of the homework and projects and assigned reading I had to do as a teenager. I don’t feel like I have to think much anymore and I miss thinking. Thinking almost feels like too much work these days. But back then, my mind was fresher and thinking came easier. I complained a lot in high school about analyzing “classic” literature in English class (how did my teacher KNOW what the author really meant when he said…) but I really loved hearing my better English teachers make the classics come back to life. It was kind of like being in a large book club. A mandatory book club. But I love that and would love to go back a reread and discuss some of the books I grumbled about forty years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But

 

I can honestly say, though, I wouldn’t really go back to being a teenager if I could. I have made more than my share of mistakes and most people would probably want some do-overs if they were me. But if doing things over would mean not having my daughters and not meeting my husband, then no thank you.

Hugs and kisses,