easing into middle age.

today, after having lunch with my pops, i asked if he wanted to go for a little ride to the plainville book exchange. ladies and gentlemen, this used to be the haven of myself and my best friend in high school. it's musty disorganization and clutter embraced us and put us out of our misery for hours on end. when they moved out of the big red house-looking place into a space in a mini strip-mall type thing, it was a little sad, but it was still there and that was good.
so today i go there after not having been there in quite some time. i was on a mission to acquire some young adult fiction as research from my next venture. it was exciting to read through the titles and remember books i'd forgotten. i read some bizarre things in my youth, but i'll get to that. i picked out a few and was checking on prices and little paperbacks with $1.95 printed on them were going for $2.99. when i inquired with the man about this, he said, "the went for $1.95 twenty years ago. [like it was obvious that i should realize the value of these things]. and our starting price for everything is $2.99." i went back and put my little pile next to its friends and told dad is was time to get out of there. so disappointing. everything about it is just not the way it was.
but, in the meantime, i remembered that i had put a whole bunch of my old books up in my mom's attic. and that would cost nothing. most of the time i took books out of the library because i read so damn much. while looking through the boxes to see which were mine, i found "my sweet audrina". "i didn't have this in hardcover..." i thought. all of my v.c. andrews books were paperback (and i had many). then i realized that it was my mother's box of books. i never thought she would have read any of those, but realizing that I said out loud, "she knew the shit i was reading?" those books are nothing but sex and seduction and incest and statutory indecency and god how i loved them. i didn't take any of those, however, as that is not the genre i'm aiming towards at this point in my life. i did find some funny ones i'd forgotten about. i was really into "two minute mysteries" and i found this other one called "you be the judge," where you had to solve courtroom type cases.
so, after i start feeling like there are spiders crawling all over me (i also found a silverfish crawling around in the box of babysitter's club books. perfect conditions. don't i understand the value of those things?!?! they could sell for almost twice the cover price!), i climb down with my stack of books and the ice skates i decided i needed to have with me and head on home.
i decided to stop at the department store where i had a gift card from a christmas return (notice the need to qualify why i would be caught shopping at a department store. lame.). department stores have scared and overwhelmed me for quite some time. it is a dilemma. i am too old to be shopping in the juniors department, where nothing covers my belly and the pants make my legs look misshapen and bumpy, but i am too young to be wearing holiday sweaters and tapered pants, as found in the grown-up ladies section. but i went to the latter anyways and was taken aback by my desire to own many of the things i saw. cutesy and hip, without being overly young or old. perfection. but also overpriced. so i notice the clearance racks and start sifting through those. i notice these goth-type kids coming down the walkway (hmmm....i guess they weren't really goth. how do you explain that current teenage fashion? i guess just that they were disgruntled teenagers and wanted you to know it by their appearance. does that make any sense?). i don't think much of it until they pass by and one of the boys says something like, "i love dressing in casual clothes," in a tone and volume letting you know that he was mocking all of us shoppers. it made me giggle a little, but when i looked in the mirror i got really confused. what do kids like that take me for? i mean, hey, i did dye my hair black in the recent past, as evidenced by my lighter roots coming out. and i was rocking my doc martens (or are those old people shoes now?). silly things like that came to my mind. i'm in this weird place between them and the moms and it's absolutely bizarro. i just couldn't make sense of it.
teenagers are weird. and it is still weird to me that i am not one of them anymore.