KristyWes

Summation

Celebrating my golden birthday at Joseph Smith's birthplace.
Don't ask why.

Continuing with our recent theme of When Harry Met Sally quotes, here's one that's appropriate for me today:

Sally: …And I'm going to be forty.

Harry: When?

Sally: Someday.

Harry: In eight years.

Sally: But it's there. It's just sitting there like
this big dead end. And it's not the same for men. Charlie
Chaplin had babies when he was seventy-three.

Harry: Yeah, but he was too old to pick them up.

[Sally laughs, then cries.]

* * *

I am 32 today. I am inescapably, undeniably ensconced in my thirties.

Does this mean the end of my girlish youth (along with its infinite possibilities and potentials)?

I worry that it does. I worry that potential was squandered, and nothing really fantastic ever happened during said youth.

I wonder if this worry is a byproduct of watching too many movies where fantastic things have a way of always happening fantastically in the nick of time. Often during fantastic musical montages.

And because my life doesn't look like that - and is rarely set to a musical montage - I often fear and feel that I have somehow failed to live to the fullest of my fantastic potential.

But during all the recent holiday-season traveling, I took some time to review the events of my life thus far. And I have to admit...I've experienced some pretty fantastic things:


I have been chased by the police...
survived multiple white water rafting trips…
Texas Two-Stepped in Austin...
danced the Virginia Reel at a formal ball...
hid in a ditch...
perfected a one-foot figure skating glide...
escaped flash floods in Madison County, VA…
received a dozen roses, unexpectedly…
jumped from a 40-ft sailboat into the Boston harbor...
took Broadway Musical Jazz Dance classes...
walked on top of a frozen Lake Winnipesaukee...
canoed on Lake Superior…
dressed up as a nun for Halloween…
co-hosted a soiree for over one hundred of my closest friends...
taught swim lessons…
sold donuts door to door…
resigned a job and received an all-expense-paid trip to Puerto Rico...
played the trombone at an NCAA basketball tournament in Missoula, MT...
hopscotched with orphans in a Russian village...
got my nose pierced in the East Village…
spent a harrowing week at Financial Aid Boot Camp....
slept on a Boatel (part boat; part hotel)...
tried escargot…
sewed a sundress…
ran a 5K Jingle Bell Run with a black eye...
dove into the North Sea on New Year's Day...
published an article…
played hooky…
got accepted to grad school…
recovered from a break-up by taking kick-boxing classes…
stayed in a sketchy Italian hostel run by a sketchy man named Ivano…
rode in a sleigh through a Vermont maple syrup farm…
learned Hebrew...
drove cross country…
stalked Seth Rogan (briefly)…
ate fish & chips in Portsmouth (UK) then had high tea in London…
let a famous legal thriller author pay for me to ride a mule in Oregon...
bought a blanket and a poncho in Tijuana, Mexico…
attended a Pointillism art exhibit in Paris…
watched the sun rise over the Atlantic…
saw it set over the Pacific…

Naturally, there are things I wish I had not done, and there are things I wish I had done. I have a few regrets; I have not lived these last 32 years perfectly.

But I have lived them.

And it's not been boring.