Mother Age

I’m under the mistaken impression that I am still young.

It has recently come to my attention that I am not.

Even though I am still (for a few more weeks at least) in my 20’s, I have three kids. The first one ages you three years, the second one ages you four more, and the third one ages you five years on top of that.

So just like we used to have “weighted” GPAs in high school, my Mother Age is somewhere around 42. Which 42 is not “old” per se, but when you’re an honorary 42 year old who doesn’t sleep enough and eats a nutritionally void diet that is mostly consumed while standing at the kitchen counter, it’s a little rough.

And then, you get the bright idea to consumer bottles, yes bottles of wine with your friends and stay out until midnight on a Wednesday night.

Wednesday night is half price wine bottle night at The Pub, for those of you who are interested. So my cohorts and I headed out to take advantage of this. And then, about 30 minutes in, this drunk 24 year old kid came over to hit on us, three married ladies. Kara asked him how old he is and his answer was something to the effect of “I’m younger than you, of course.”

This, coupled with the fact that he had (at 8pm) already consumed so much beer that he couldn’t open his eyes all the way, should have been a warning.

The night lumbered on and he started tell us how his sister (who I went to high school with) is a whore because she got pregnant and had a abortion at 17. What kind of wacko calls his sister a whore to perfect strangers?? That was just the tip of the iceberg, but I won’t go into details here. Let’s just say it was highly disturbing, and he repeatedly tried to get Keri to leave with him because he deemed by some method his puny little brain created that she had the least happy marriage out of the three of us and was the likeliest to commit adultery. Like I said, he was a super individual.

So we ended up next door at the pizza place to let some of the wine to wear off. And when I say pizza place, I’m talking like gourmet, fancy pizza. It was delicious. So there we are, at 11pm or something, eating our delicious pizza with wonderfully spicy pepperoni, and the owner of the place comes over to chat. He’s a legit Italian guy named Fabio. He ends up pouring us some champagne and discussing how American men only work out their upper bodies and never their legs, therefore making them look like birds. His point is an excellent one. Anyway, he was a super nice guy, and like I said, his place makes the most lovely, flavorful pizza I’ve had in some time. But in the back of my mind I keep thinking, who do we think we are? Young people with no kids? This is going to hurt in the morning.

And, uh yeah, it hurts. I woke up thirsty, hungry, thirsty, hungry some more, and tired. The kids were up at 6:30, and I had no time to acclimate before I picked myself up by the boot straps and headed out to swim lessons.

So, I think that when you and two friends consume two bottles of wine plus some champagne, get insulted by a guy in a bar who is only five years younger than you but behaves worse than your toddler, and stay out so late that it’s the next day when you make it home, you can add 15 years to your already adjusted Mother Age. Which makes me 57 today.

That feels about right. I must have some grandchildren running around here somewhere.