Fall is in full-swing. The leaves have turned and are slowly but surely making their transition from beautiful Providence scenery into rain-slicked death traps. Quelle dommage! As nature dies all around me, I like to take note of my youth and vitality, and resent it to the fullest extent of my ability. I am an old soul. I realize that there are a whole host of articles and television representations of the grouchy old man that paint his archetype as a cute and quirky romantic ideal. Or perhaps that is just ideal for me. However, there is an untold dark side to having the body of a twenty-one year old and the mind, soul, and dietary preferences of Betty White.
I shall recount an anecdote. Summer 2014. I am being hip and cool and with it by staying in Providence during break. My spritely rising-sophomore sublet-mate has a social life. There were perhaps no fewer than three occasions where she trotted past me on her way out to see living people and caught me huddled in a snuggie, glasses dripped down to the tip of my nose, shoveling soup in my mouth as I watched my “stories” and prepared for an early tuck-in. I remember looking in the mirror and wondering who the crone was and where were the thirty-seven cats that went with my outfit?
The reality is, this makes for a fun story. The irony. The soup. But I am trying to resist my geriatric tendencies to shutter in a drafty lecture and mumble obscenities at street youths that pass me on my way to get Echinacea from CVS. Hopefully, I will have many years to enjoy my natural born crotchetiness. For now, I’m going to try and embrace my actual age, youth the fuck up, and stay up until at least 11pm on a school night.
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