a fifty-something under-tall half-deaf school librarian in the jersey suburbs with two grown kids and time on her hands

Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.

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12.01.2005

8:19 pm

You know how when you're a kid, you assume that every other family is more or less like yours? Each family has its different ways of doing things, good or bad, but when you're a kid, yours is all you know, so you figure your family is normal and everyone else's is just like yours. I'm talking about the goofy things here, like I figured everyone ate dinner every day at 5:00 sharp, no later, because we did. No one else had plants in their house, because we didn't. Having plants in your house would be very weird, if you were little me.

Cut to big me. Some of those quirks are just so hard to shake. So tell me: in other families, do adult women leave the house after dark? Alone?

I'm guessing that of course they do. You need to go pick something up at the supermarket, or *gasp* go to the mall, you do. We did not. To do so meant certain death, according to my father, and he made sure we knew it as long as he lived. (He would often warn us over the phone not to go out at night.) A woman out alone after dark was an invitation to crime. No one could survive.

It's taken me almost 53 years, but I'm finally starting to realize that, you know, whenever I have gone out alone after dark, I have always come home alive. I'm not saying I'm going to go do all kinds of strange things, but here I was in the house before, it was 7:00, the Hubs is teaching and R is in the city (yes, where she goes and comes home alone, and on public transportation, yet) and I wanted something that I knew I could only get at Costco. So I went. And as you can see, I continue to live.

Really, how long does it take to get over all this quirky crap from your childhood? Do you ever get over it? Some of it, at least? Okay, I guess I'm finally getting past some of it. I can't help but wonder what I'll still be afraid of in the old folks' home.

Okay, just asking. I've got to go water the plants now.

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I'm watching The O.C. (I'm not really watching.)
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