Age is just a number.
Bullshit.
I get the idea. One’s essence, a personality, remains intact throughout life whether eight or eighty, but I approach the bench and argue the case that age does indeed matter. I am nearing a half century myself, and it is window clear…chronological differences are more than skin deep. Remember whale breasted gold digger Anna Nicole Smith, twentysomething with her 90-year old liver spotted, crumpled, barely alive husband? (This guy had a massive smile in every photo with her, I have to believe he was pretty smug about not leaving her in his will.) Come on. What could they possibly have in common? What did they have to talk about other than gee, ma’am y’all are doing a great job removing your clothes, here’s fifty bucks and a Werther’s. He’s from the era of peanut brittle and sarsparilla, she’s trashy MTV and Sour Patch Kids. Two different worlds, and no one dances the Charleston listening to Eminem. If I strayed too far from my generational lane, I either was snickering at the high-waisted grandpa jeans and Velcro shoes, or didn’t want to get Snapchat and talk about shows I only know about because of my college age offspring. Inconveniently, however, people don’t have their ages tattooed on their foreheads (there’s probably some idiot out there who does, but for the sake of my story I’m ignoring that moron), so I am playing a very unsure game of blind man’s bluff.
Especially in a dimly lit bar with a band playing at jet engine volume.
It’s the Tiny Town bar crowd. I ironically thank God for not recognizing anyone from my church days. They must be home polishing their Bible figurines, or memorizing their verses, or judging meth heads at the dollar store, or whatever it is religious folk do in their free time, I no longer know. After my latest experiences with the cheat brigade, I’m just enjoying being out with my girlfriends. Safe, free, fun.
Alone.
I’m starting to think being single is rather underrated.
It was so short lived.
“MONICA there’s someone I want you to meet! ” In Tiny Town?
Ew.
“Come on, he’s a great guy!” Business owner, faithful, good person…The way she’s extolling his virtues, this guy is neck in neck with Mother Teresa for canonization. Saint GoodDude.
Alright, FINE. I reluctantly agree to first contact, and as my girlfriend leads me through a sea of faces in this overpacked bar, GoodDude’s smile emerges from the crowd.
We start chatting and my friend dips back into the ocean of sardines in this tiny can of a room, purposely leaving me alone with Gooddude. Setting me up. I happily discover we have a lot in common. He’s a musician, and plays guitar on the worship team at one of the churches in which I used to lead with DX. Pastor South’s church, the first of the three in which we were the music ministers. It’s been over twenty years since we served at that church, this is digging into archives and is nothing this guy would remember.
We talk about church. We talk about business. We talk about life. He’s holding me. He’s kissing me. He’s holding my hands in his. We dance. Amazing. Have I finally met someone who has an ounce of moral fiber, some ethics, some virtue? Not like those awful cheaters. This is awesome. I am once again jumping wayy ahead in my mind, already wondering how I’ll make a long distance relationship work, my usual mistake of getting overly excited when I barely know a guy. I’m rounding the last bend on the racetrack and the guy isn’t even yet in the parking lot, and the GPS directed him to a random warehouse miles away anyway.
I duck into the restroom, be right back!
My lipsticked self returns, but GoodDude is nowhere to be found. I don’t see him anywhe-wait! There he is! At the bar. Back turned toward me, animatedly speaking to a cute blonde. What the hell? Did I do something wrong? What’s going on? I try to catch his eye, but he is very obviously avoiding me.
Weird.
I’m bewildered. What derailed this?? The train with GoodDude has very clearly gone off the rails and lies useless on its side, wheels frantically spinning but going nowhere. Dead in the water, no idea why. I hang with my friends and write it off as just another guy that didn’t work.
Until morning.
Phone.
Gravel hello.
“Umm… Monica”
My friend sounds almost… sheepish? The voice informs me Good Dude is Churchlady’s son.
Memories of a rather dowdy dark-haired church lady I used to spend time with a million years ago flood into my mind. We are driving to a homeschool event together, her with her bun on her head, me with its matching twin, in her well used minivan because that’s what all of us church wives drove. A quintessential ruined-carpet vehicle with a diorama of Fruit by the Foot wrappers, expired juice boxes, and enough petrified French fries to create a miniature shrine to fast food under every seat. And the image of me, barely twenty and playing proper Church Lady myself in my long skirt and three-quarter length sleeve overly modest top, off to whatever revival, or rummage sale, or big grocery store in a bigger city, while her young children played in the back. Strange. I acted like I was in my forties when I was in my twenties, now I am living out what you normally do in your twenties in my forties. Oh wait…
her young children…
Her YOUNG CHILDREN
Her BOYS!
And with a shock of revelation from the dusty annals in the attic of my brain, I suddenly realize GoodDude is a helluva lot younger than I thought he was.
He stopped talking to me because he figured out who I was!! I was a church lady who was friends with his mom and knew him when he was just a little kid. He was the towheaded tot annoying us from the back seat. He was a little kid goofing off in the back of the church while I was leading worship. He is 25, not in his early forties like I had guessed.
I feel ridiculous. I’m over twenty years his senior. But… most embarrassingly, I had spent quite a bit of time with his mom back in the day. Did I babysit him?
AUUUUUGGHHH!!!
So awkward.
It is my final venture out in Tiny Town.
Oh, but it’s not over, nope, not at all.
Another close friend in Tiny Town’s son is getting married. In like two weeks. I’m very close to her, and wouldn’t miss out on it for the world.
Guess who’s standing up in the wedding, mere weeks after this embarrassment of an interaction?
Yep.
And I sit there, mortified as I watch couple after couple in their wedding uniforms sashay slowly and deliberately down the center aisle of the church. And there he is, GoodDude, one in a row of now rather obviously nubile twentysomethings filing obediently down the main drag to join their clones on the sides of the altar.
I can see his mom on the other side of the church.
SO awkward.
I leave the reception early, another lesson learned.
Back in Big Suburb, I order a glass of wine at my bad-date respite house of spirits, and sit and consider.
“Heyy, there,…” A guy sidles into the chair next to mine, and places his hand on the back of the chair.
I slowly turn my head and a nice looking, but very young, kid is looking at me like I’m dinner.
I am done with this.
“How old even are you?”
Twenty three.
One year older than my son. He could be my son’s roommate.
“I’m 48.” I state flatly.
“That’s just a number.” …and follows this statement with a litany of virtues that are supposed to prove there is something here worth pursuing.
OH, honey. If you only knew. The life that I’ve seen, the years lived, the children borne, the opportunities lost, the death of loved ones, all that goes into a near half-century of life.
I just want to give him a Caprisun and a granola bar and put him on the schoolbus to toddle on home.
I smack Andrew Jackson on the counter. He glares back at me, age appropriate with his salt and pepper hair. Hey, honey, come here often? But that’s not who I meet. I meet an electrician who turns out to be 28. I meet another gentleman who not only turns out to be 26, but after a polite no, I am approached in the same place by an older gentleman, divorced, mid conversation, Yeah, my son’s here too. Gestures to the end of the bar, and heyyy, there’s the 26 yr old. It’s his son. He reaches out and waves with a big, bright smile. I have to laugh.
Does everyone know everyone out here?
I’m about to discover that Big Suburb…ain’t so big.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 