Note to Self

 "If you could go back in time what you say to your younger self?"

Isn't that something every celebrity gets asked at some point in time? Isn't it something, as much as we might eye roll mightily when we watch that interview, we've wondered about our own selves?  I have.  I have such a long list that I think by the time the younger me sat and listened to it all she'd meet me in the present.  Probably first and foremost is stay in college and quit being a dumbass about it and take it seriously. By the time I was a good student I was working and a young mother. I missed all the fun that college can offer, taking night classes and studying sitting next to my kids' bathtub while I got them ready for bed, and while I ended up with a decent career as it stands, it's not the one I dreamed of, and one wonders...

Which brings me to the futility of the original question and probably why our eyes roll when it gets posed. Why even bother thinking about it? Take the life you've given yourself, learn from your mistakes where and how you can, but don't waste time with regrets. Sounds pretty logical, right?  Sure.  But, damn, I wish I could slap some sense into my teenage self, if not on the big stuff like college and men (which is this: don't go through the boy-crazy phase, it's not becoming and you'll cringe a lot - a LOT - when you think of it later in life), but some of the little stuff that I pay for now that was SO avoidable.

Biggest one: wear ear plugs at concerts.  I eschewed them almost out of spite of the conventional wisdom.  Like that was going to be my rebellion against The Man. And it wasn't just concerts. I used to get home from school in the afternoons when both my parents were at work and plop one of my albums on their huge living room record player - you know, the one that's larger than some apartments - and then see how loud I could get it.  I could walk to the end of the driveway and still hear it.  How I didn't blow out their speakers or cause the neighbors to complain was a wonder.  I imagine most of the neighbors were working too and their kids didn't care; they were listening to their own loud stuff.  I remember sunbathing one summer day to the sound of Donna Summer's Bad Girls...an album which I had, but it was someone several doors down playing it. But all that rebellious rock and roll has left me deaf way beyond my years.  I have a cheap pair of hearing aids but I hate them, so if you ever wonder why I prefer texting or emailing, that's probably why. Biggest problem is: all that music that was so important to me, and that I so wanted to listen intently to savor every instrument and catch every lyric?  It's still just as important to me, but now I struggle to hear it the way I want to.  Pure idiocy on my part.  Seriously.

Speaking of sunbathing, I really wish I hadn't gone the baby oil route.  For those of you too young to remember, the 70's was the bronze age, as in skin that was bronzed was the coveted look.  So we used baby oil to essentially baste ourselves - like a Thanksgiving turkey. Why I bothered I don't know. I was the penultimate Irish-American girl: pale and freckled. And embarrassed about it.  Everyone else I knew tanned so easily. I just freckled, so the goal was to merge the freckles together somehow. I never did. But, living in a high altitude location, sitting out with oil slathered all over me, I didn't do my future self any favors.  I'm so far lucky actually. Nothing as serious as melanoma, although I know others who are not so fortunate, but I look down at my hands, I feel my leathery skin, and I know I was playing with almost literal fire. And who's to say that I'm out of the woods for more serious consequences.  I'll knock on some of that wood and hope so. In many ways, I don't think being a teenager in the 2020's is easier or better than it was in the 70's but I'm grateful when I see all skin tones celebrated.  I wish I could have accepted and been comfortable in my own skin.

Maybe the real thing to try and tell my young self is that you think the future is so far away. What you'll find is it really isn't.  And you know you'll pay a price at some point for whatever it is that you're doing that is self-destructive, but that time seems so distant. What you'll actually find is that you will happen upon it so quickly that you will be left reeling from how fast it happened. How did I get here, you'll ask? Yesterday I was carefree, lathered in baby oil, listening to my neighbor's disco albums.  Today I've asked my granddaughter to repeat herself at least a dozen times, and I'm really pissing her off - and she's only three!  How can I make her so mad already? Doesn't that come later when she's in her teens and then I REALLY embarrass her?

You only get one body. Act accordingly.