Normally I am a staunch misanthrope, but occasionally the planets and my blood sugar align and I have just enough caffeine in me to start up a conversation full of niceties with the dude who owns the pet store I shop at. Such was the case this morning, when I actually took the initiative to butt into a conversation that he was already having with another patron about what school to send his daughter to.
I of course had to offer my opinion that any West Coast born and bred 18-year old is bound to die of thermal shock if attempting to spend a winter in Boston, and then—as is my irritating nature—abruptly changed my mind and said that Boston is a great town and she should totally go for it.
The point of all this is that Mister Pet Store turned out to be my angel today. During the course of conversation he asked me how old I am. I told him. He looked suitably shocked. (Take that, bag boys at The Hole who have started calling me “ma’am.”)
I told him about my scholastic regrets and how I wished I had chosen to go to school for English literature instead of, um, pottery. He said he didn’t think I had turned out so bad. I said that he didn’t know; I have. He said that I should look at it this way: I got all the meandering around out of my system, so I probably won’t have the mid-life crisis that most people have at 40. I said, you know what? That’s brilliant! I am totally ahead of the curve if you look at it that way! I am not a late bloomer at all; I’m a reverse bloomer.
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The truth is, I tend to wallow in regret about such things and give myself a pretty hard time for not having achieved more at this point in my life. Especially now that I have found a profession that truly speaks to me, I wonder, why did I not listen to 8-year old me and become a writer sooner?
As far as I can tell, I’m not alone as a writer in preferring my own company to that of most others. For me, P&Q almost always wins over going out and mingling with people all the live long day (just ask the guy who picked a fight with me at the library last week). The irony is that I need to have interpersonal experiences in order to have anything to ever write about. I guess the fifteen-ish years I spent as a starving apprentice potter, abused photography lackey, terrible waitress, melancholy dotcommer, lackluster yoga teacher, and surley acupuncture studio manager were all important stepping stones to where I’m at now. You can’t learn everything from books; sometimes you have to actually talk to people.
