Dead Man’s Bones | (HAND)MADE IN FRIENDSHIP

Going through old school notebooks at my parent’s home a year or so ago, I found a 10-year prediction I wrote in 11th grade English (3rd period). Here’s the gist (and by gist I mean every word of it, spelling and grammar errors included).

In ten years from now I’ll be twenty-six. I’ll most likely live in an apartment with a brand new Eclipse. My apartment won’t have many valuables since I’ll be still paying off student loans, and my car payments on a car I really can’t afford, but splurged for it anyway. There won’t be any children running around.

At that point in my life I’ll be too selfish for anyone else to take care of, and that statement being true, I won’t have a partner. I’ll be more concetrated on finding a teaching job in the New York area since I”ll be living there after attending NYU.I will also be singing at a local club for extra money at night. I”ll be popular but will end up quitting if it goes no where and find a teaching job.

Finally I will be happy with my life, confident and taking as many classes as I can to increase my knowledge and skills.

My 16-year-old self was a visionary, no? Okay, so she did not get the exact car model or city correct, and it turns out I do not moonlight as a lounge singer, but I’d say the rest of it is more or less where I am at 27: no kids, no husband, riddled with student loan debt and racking up more (not to mention a bit selfish). What can I say? For as much as I’d like to own a charming fixer-upper house and secretly—or not so secretly—hope to have loads of babies, I am taking my good damn time.

My high school boyfriend and I used to spend hours on the phone sharing how much we hoped we would not become “just like everyone else” with 2.5 children and a house in the suburbs, working for the weekends. “I’d rather be living in a cardboard box on the side of the road,” Kevin once told me. “Me too,” I said. We promised each other to give utterly disapproving looks and sigh in disappointment if we found each other years later living the “conventional” lifestyle.

For as much as those feelings were teenage angst, I must admit they have stayed with me. My friend Allison and I talk about it often, which is why we got together to create what I am now calling “The Lost Girls Mix: Songs to Stay Young.”

Here’s the track list.

“Kids” by MGMT