If you think about it, we spend our entire lives outgrowing things. Becoming too old for things. Clothes, trends and habits are some of the more obvious ones.
But then there are some devastating or life-changing ones.
Like when I realized that I was too old for trick-or-treating. That was a tough one. What was once one of the best, most fun nights of my life became a tedious and LONG walk in the cold for candy that I wouldn't even eat half of, and long night of complaining about how long it took to get the shaving cream and raw egg out of my hair.
Christmas and Easter quickly followed suit. Being the baby of the family, I think my parents were devastated the first Christmas morning they had to wake me up and ask if I wanted to open my presents, to which I believe I responded, "Can you give me an hour?"
Outgrowing holding my father's hand in public is one that I know traumatized my dad. The funny thing is that I grew back into that one. There was short fifteen year gap when holding my dad's hand was not cool, but I'll take any chance I get to do it now.
Then there's the list of things that I haven't outgrown that I was supposed to, according to my parents, science and the laws of physics: That awkward stage (I still walk into walls and trip over my own feet), my hatred of green vegetables, my irrational fear of scary movies and all things supernatural, my ability to sleep for 18 hours straight while I'm perfectly healthy and not feel like I've wasted my day.
And I bring all this up because I have recently discovered two more things that I have outgrown, one being the metabolism that simply decided to stop working once I turned thirty.
The other is the ability to consume alcohol and still be a human being the next day.
Last night I went to a bar with some friends to watch a co-worker's band perform. I had exactly two drinks and two shots - child's play in my younger years! I stayed out until 2:30AM - again, an early hour compared to my heyday! I proceeded to spend the night in the bathroom and the entire day in bed. To my credit, I did drag myself out of bed, moaning and groaning the whole way, to feed my babies. And I only got snippy once when they meowed and skunked (there's no other word for it, it's a very distinctive skunk noise) at me by telling them to shut up because mommy was dying, their yowling and carrying on was only going to make mommy die quicker, and if mommy died there would be no one to feed them.
The lesson I have learned from this? I'm too old to do this shit anymore.
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