Dear JJ,
After unsuccessfully trying to get people to call you JJ for two years in middle school you finally achieved the goal in adulthood, well after the age when nicknames are endearing.
Still you got your two-letter abbreviated first name, one small victory against fate. Congrats!
Thought you might be interested in this little blast from the past. I found our diary from the second grade. Remember that one? The Hello Kitty diary with really big lines and pastel paper? Yeah that one. We only made six entries that year, but they are very telling. We were seven when we wrote those logs, big block letters and hearts over our “i’s.” We had very annoying penmanship.
The fourth entry is particularly interesting. “Where I’ll be when I’m 27.” We misspelled “where”… wrote “were,” but we were seven so perhaps we can forgive ourselves for that one. Do you know where we thought we’d be? Can you remember? Apparently at 27 we thought we would be the following:
- Married
- Have twins, Bill (after our Dad) and Molly (after our favorite doll)
- We’d be a nurse, a ballet teacher, and a flight attendant (we wrote stuwardess, but I’m pretty sure that means flight attendant)
- A millionaire (because so many nurses, teachers, and flight attendants are millionaires)
- Own a stable with 6 horses (we even named them, I won’t list them but I like that we really thought about it and made a detailed plan)
- Give Mom a beach house, Dad a plane, and our brother nothing because he’s a butt head (maybe we had a fight that day)
So. We’re 27. How’d we do?
- Single (devastatingly so, we got close once. You remember that guy? Yeah, thank God we came to our senses)
- No kids, which is a very good thing considering we’re in no position to raise a child at the moment. Also, not wild about those names any more.
- We quit ballet in the third grade, so that dream was short lived. Mom really wanted us to go into nursing like her, but we were feeling rebellious and scoffed at the idea and as for flight attendant? As soon as we found out how little they make we said no thank you. Instead we’re a political consultant making a little more (very little) than flight attendants. We travel like they do, living out of suitcases… so good job there I guess. But the downside? We work 80 hours a week for little to know thanks and have destroyed three blackberries, two laptops (ok one Delta destroyed one but you should have put it in the carry on instead of packing it), and earned enough frequent flyer miles that you qualify for a trip to the moon.
- No horses, not even a dog. We do have a fish tank with three fish (ok there used to be 9, but the others were obviously pansies not cut out for the hardships of being our pet). The survivors of the first brood; Hawthorne, Faulkner, and Fennimore-Cooper are doing just fine and they seem to really appreciate it when you remember to feed them in the morning.
- We’re thousandaires… ok we’re getting desperately close to being a hundresaire but at least we can keep the lights on and afford starbucks every once and a while. You savings account will keep us a float for 3 months should we get screwed in this economy and you have to live with roommates unable to afford the ridiculous rent in Washington, DC to live on your own. Bonus? at least you like your roommates.
- Mom and Dad got a place on the river, we had nothing to do with that but we painted three bedrooms in the dead of July sweating our ass off … so we did our part. Dad’s pilot license expired ten years ago so buying him a plane would really be moot at this point and though you disliked your baby bro at seven, you think he’s awesome now and you’d give him a kidney if he needed it. You stopped fighting after puberty.
Not exactly how we pictured it, huh? That’s ok, if life turned out how everyone wanted it to at seven the workforce would be 33% firefights, 33% doctors, and 33% teachers. Not exactly useful.
The good news? You have a roof over your head. You don’t have a life threatening disease. You have friends and family that you love and that love you back. You like what you do… ok most of the time, but most of the time is still better than many people. At least you don’t have to dig ditches or clean up people’s poop.
So, let’s not make a list of “were” we’ll be in the next twenty years, ok? Chances are that our life will change and what we want now may not be what we want in the future. Let’s just ride it out, ok? I think we’ll be fine. And remember what your grandmother used to tell you: You only get one life, so don’t fuck it up (She probably didn’t say fuck when we were seven, but she does now and we like it, when we’re old we’ll get to say fuck whenever we want too. One more thing to look forward too.)
Talk to you in twenty years. Until then, be good.
All my best,
JJ
