Twenty years have gone by. Granted, I hardly remember the dewy, young, soft-skinned days of my first 5 or so years. Flashes of birthday parties and scrunchies and ill-applied costume makeup and confetti cakes and costume jewelry and torn pink gowns and bead kits spring into my old mature twenty year old as of sometime between 9pm and 11:59 brain.
I think I'm rather the same person as that twiggy, verbose, shy fresh red head. My likes are still highly in line with that young thing. My wants and visions may have changed drastically, just about as drastically as the chemical change from liquid water to steam.
I'm still me----Hannah, the gingery, pale-skinned, dancer-esque, contemplative, monotonal-at-times girl. but clearly stature and mind set have developed immensely, and though I am young and directionless in moments, I do know a few things about myself that I find as giant stepping stones to who I want to be and who I know I can become. These are mine, and mine alone, and don't need to be publicized (oh the secrecy).
I simply know that I am proud of me, not vain, but truly proud of the place I am in life and the sheer knowledge and awareness of myself I've come to grasp.

The yellow glow of the bulb lights on the State Theatre.

The gads of T-shirted kids and their parents crowding in the waiting area of a pizza joint.

Toned bodies showing off their athleticism despite the cool blast of the not-yet-summer Lake Michigan breeze.

Bittersweet chocolate gelato from American Spoon; more frozen liquid chocolate bar than iced cream concoction.

The sunroof down, bad radio music blaring, throwback sunglasses jauntily perched on nose, hair whirling.

                              THIS IS MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND IN TRAVERSE CITY.

It wasn't the first time. That this idea had occurred to me. It was not the first passing of this observation through my overly-spa'd, muddle-with-sleeplessness, summer vacation brain. It had happened before, countless times, and is not anything but a small notice of a common and shared and accepted idea.
Everyone's mind is like a series of wheels and tines, much like that of a music box or any machine, really. Not two people alive are 'wired' the same way. All of us have wheels of different sizes, tines in varying locales, and a generally unique method to the madness of the human mind, all jumbled, complex, and on information overload!!! No human being will ever again be formulated with the same brain as Einstein was, therefore comparison of intelligencia and gifts, so to speak, are intensely futile and nothing but nonsense.
This is clearly why we are not all talented in the same way; therefore, we cannot all be neuro-surgeons, cannot all be accountants, and cannot all be rock stars. This has nothing to do with IQ, nor does it have to do with brain capacity. The tines in our brain are where things 'click'. For me, I like words and I like stats---I don't have a tine where my brother does for accounting, nor a tine where my mother does for genuine friendliness. I'd rather work in a room alone with a box chalk full of words than to be put in any sort of compromising teamwork-oriented or socially awkward setting. But what is awkward and compromising for me probably isn't for outgoing, lime-light-loving people like JLo or Muse.
All I'm saying is we all have out knacks. One should never put another down for not getting something or not being comfortable with something: just because a human can't figure out standard deviation is no reason to dis their intelligence. Some of us have waffle brains, some spaghetti, some like words, and some like letters.
The fact is you have a brain. Use it.

I know it's a normal experience, but it still gets me every time.
I crave something alllllllll day, or alllllll week or even for months, and after I satisfy my appetite for it, the mere bubble-thought of it repulses me such as milk turns away a lactose intolerant man who's eaten 14 pints of ice cream
For instance, our town got a Jimmy John's not long ago, and I'd been saving the french bread and sprouts experience for the exactly opportune time, which I concluded to be my birthday week. Well, I got insatiably hungry in stats today, and concluded I could have a birthday double-week; therefore I went to the place of free smells directly from class---meaning I shot out of my class, into my car, and one measly 1/2 block down the road in about 1 minute.
I ate my JJ's, a #6, while driving, in roughly 6 minutes, probably amusing one too many drivers, seeing a ginger nomming un-ladylike on a gourmet sub sandwich with '80s inspired sunglasses on, listening to Real Rock. It was quite delicious, till about half way through; then it got rather a chore to eat this monotonous card and veggie loaf.
I don't want Jimmy John's again for an eon. My throat feels like mayonnaise is coating it like pipe cleaner to a cruddy shower drain. When I think 'alfalfa sprouts', my gelatinous-encompassed throat closes up and my stomach churns like an old milk maids butter maker.
I don't want any more gourmet subs for a while. I'll be ok with the Free Smells, as they advertise.

Toilet Texting

You know what makes me mad? There you are in a public restroom, minding your own business, and all you can hear coming from the next stall is 'click click click clickity clikity click'. Ugh. Someone is toilet texting.

I have thought about toilet texting before: I'll be having a perfectly pleasant conversation with someone, and then just as I am headed for the restroom, they send me something hilarious that I desperately want to text back to---HOWEVER, I then remember the cardinal rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Have you ever thought that the text you received 4 minutes ago originated on the john? Has it ever crossed your mind that someone might be conversing with while they are in a dirty, dingy-white, stanky bathroom in Walmart in the dicey part of San Diego, with a dripping sludgy mop in the corner and Bubba waiting outside in a wife beater? Have you ever thought that your conversation about your plans next week might be coming from the french-fry scented depths of a McDonald's men's room?
There is just one thing I ask of you all. Don't ever toilet text me. Don't toilet text a single soul. The next time you're tempted to whip that phone out while you're doing your thing, don't. Just don't.

Now don't even get me started on Toilet Phone Call. If you can hear a flush in the background, yell at the person calling you, hang up, and don't talk to them until they regain the decency every human being should possess.

Graduation Glasses

There is a concept that I was recently introduced to by a dear friend: she called it 'Graduation Glasses'. When you 'graduate' from a situation, you tend to want to be in that particular situation once again, even though while you were in the situation itself, you were clearly unhappy. You look back and remember the good before the bad, even though you recognize that the bad existed.
This is a fascinating theory to me, and I realize I choose to wear these glasses a lot. I regret they way I've acted in the past, and wish I could go back and change things---however, upon further consideration, I realize I'm probably going to regret my regret, and consequently the cycle will continue until I am regretting regretting the regret that I once had, and will no longer have any sense of living in the present at all.
In conclusion, I know I'm not perfect: I am going to act how I act, and if it causes regret, there's not much I can do. But I'm not going to analyze my every current mood and position in hopes to cancel any regret I may have in the future, for that is not living---that is robbing yourself of a life.

Resort-ee

I've never thought of myself as a person particularly gifted towards solicitousness. That is, I haven't ever been a people person. I think this is linked with the fact that as a young girl my mother set me alone in a play pen to entertain myself---she said it was to protect me from my siblings. That's whack. Or maybe it's true. Either way, I think this planted a loner seed in my being, and that's why I don't mind eating alone, driving myself to far off places alone, or really spending a whole day without human interaction.
So I find it quite ironic that the only jobs I've ever held have been in customer service, or at least dealing with people. Working as a till girl at a specialty food shoppe...cleaning rooms at a B & B...being a nanny...a student worker in an office building...and soon to be spa attendant and bus girl.
I can't say I hate dealing with perfect strangers in a money-gaining setting, but it sure isn't my favorite thing. *Sometimes I regret wishing away my nanny job in Florida, where I watched Regis and Kelly every morning and rocked out to Alt Nation in my bikini; where I nearly beat Mario Brothers and got to see a baby learn to crawl & see her smile as I blew bubbles into the 90 degree sun-scented air. Quite bluntly...I miss Madison. And I miss Lindsey. And gosh darn it, I even miss my big ol' brother, Nate. Those are the kind of people I don't mind dealing with. *

Time is a peculiar concept...Father Time, 'Give it some time', 'Only time will tell', 'This time around...' Even the word is odd. Say it enough times and you begin to question the English language, and the person who invented words at all. Think of it conceptually and your brain become muddled with the absurdity that time really is: The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole...a non spatial continuum...a measurable period of action or non-action. Time~ can be bittersweet.

People you were close with at one time move on.
What seems abominable at present is just a faint memory after some time...
You live and you love, but sometimes it's not enough. Sometimes it is.
The future seems so bright and far off, but given some time, it's here and now; the things you want to stay the same change, and the ones you long to change stay the same.
Time is supposed to heal, but sometimes it creates a gaping void that cannot be filled in with anything at all.

I suppose all those cliches are true---Time really can tell, and it certainly alters ones perspective. Things change with time, and so do people.   
Time can be a positive passing of existence, or it can simply cause us to look back at what we wish we still had, or long for what we hope to have in some far off place.