Just Be Careful, Okay?

This weekend, I went to a graduation party for my cousin and my god daughter. As in all graduation parties since time immemorial, the graduates headed for the basement, and the older folks stayed upstairs. That’s how I did it, that’s how you did it, and that’s how they do it now. At most mixed-age parties this is the standard: The kids go one way and the adults go the other.

I know where the lines are drawn. Even if I could stand the sing-song conversations of an 18 year old crowd for more than ten minutes, there was no way that I was going to be that guy who thinks that he can successfully integrate with a bunch of 18 year old kids by lamely imitating them. So, if I accepted my station, why did I feel a little left out? Maybe it was because I usually can be found entertaining a bunch of little kids more often than adults. Maybe it was because that even though I still think of myself the same way as I did when I was 18, this was solid proof that I really wasn’t.

As I was contemplating the situation, I mentioned it to my uncle who looked at me with a grin and said, “At some point, you’ll be the oldest one at these things.”

Instantly, I saw myself as a very old man, sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the kitchen. People bustled around me, but didn’t seem to notice that I was effectively alone. The imaginary me looked at the daydreaming me and grinned, snapping me back to reality.

And I suddenly felt really, really out of place.

When I was leaving, I wanted to give my god daughter four-hundred and fifty-two pounds of advice: Don’t be that kid that gets alcohol poisoning during orientation, meet as many people as you can in the first week, don’t smoke anything given to you by people you don’t know, be as many different people as you can, hide your valuables if you have a party, try everything, don’t get hooked on anything, join the radio station for the free CDs, have fun, learn something…

And I realized that like the old man in my daydream, I was gearing up to offer unsolicited advice to a kid who hadn’t asked for it.

After looking at her for a second, her brassy grin told me that she was going to earn her bumps just like the rest of us, and all I could offer was,