I think when you turn 25, you are tossed into a new reality. This belief has been validated several times since then. Today was one such time.
I am in a room full of strangers, gathered to work for a small hourly rate promoting a brand on the streets of New York. I am surrounded by squeaky girls commenting on which clubs in NYC are good for picking up guys while contradicting eachother's agreements that you can't pick up good guys in NYC clubs.
They speak over each other and nod excitedly, all of their opinions magically coinciding to provide immediate bonds, for the moment. The topics range from "all the hot guys that were coming off the subway this morning!" to "guys, do any of you have fake IDs??".
They discuss circumsized/uncircumsized penises and their recent trips "studying abroad" in foreign countries. At some points I feel like I'm sitting in a bizarre episode of "Sex and the City" in which the stars' much younger and less experienced understudies have taken over. I am silent.
As I hear a few connect over the shared experience of just turning 19, another comments that 22 is such a 'cute age'. Just as one poo-poo's 25, another makes a pathetic attempt to redeem it by boasting that you will then be able to rent a car. They responded to that just as boisterously as I did on my 25th birthday. The original poo-poo'er defines 25 as an age that means "marriage" to her (she has just turned 19). I observe quietly along with the sweet brazilian girl whose english makes her a weak contender for their astute commentary.
I am trapped in some strange reality where everyone around me is at a COMPLETELY different point in their lives than I. Their realities are as real to them as mine is to me, yet they all seem like strange little giggling aliens! I find myself envious of their trips to Europe that I keep saying I'll take. That is all I am jealous of. I feel like I'm sitting in glass box at the end of the table witnessing an experiment to see what happens when you toss several '22 and unders' in a room with one 28 year old just to see what happens. All I could do was sit there, restrained within the reality I understood in my box, and appreciate everything on the outside as my excruciating amusement.
We continued the rest of our day and I made friends with the brazilian girl, partially because she too had felt a little left out of the ambiguously intimate lunch we had all just shared, and partially because Kate Winslet took one of her flyers!! Although I am now aware that I should have respected my initial reservations about taking this low-payed promotion, I accepted my having agreed to do it. I did this because, like these bizarre giggling aliens, I need the money.
It will only be a few short and quick years before at least half of these girls are in my position, far from marriage after 25 or having had their first baby already. I hope by then I will have experienced my travels abroad and we will ALL be very far from needing a job like this. Until then, I will still be baffled that one of them, born and raised on Long Island, now living in the city mentioned that she voted for Bush last year. She said she had faith in him. She thought John Kerry was evil. This is why I never voted in an election until last year, because when I was young and dumb like that, I knew I had no business being in a voting booth. In the world we are living in right now, though, I can't imagine still being THAT dumb.
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