Love Letters and Judgmental Senior Citizens

Growing up can be scary. Yes, its "turning a page in your life story" or "finding a deeper meaning or purpose with your destiny" but when you are fidgeting in the unforgiving wooden desk and preparing to take a test that could alter your future...its just scary. Like many other scary things though (mystery meat stew, the near-death experience between turning off the light and landing in bed, deleting important files accidentally) there is a bright side.

College, for example. Now thats a whole can of worms I'm not going to try and pry open in this blog post (perhaps in the future) but it is rather like training to be a ninja. Only a lot less awesome. From birth you are trained in by special teachers to know everything you must know to be a competent human being and student. You read, study, test, and then cram constantly in preparation for (DUH_DUH-DUUUUHHHH): The Test. Whether you call it the SAT, the ACT, or MY WORST NIGHTMARE, every teenager comes to it. Its time to put all of your experience to the test and you are suddenly wishing you hadn't spark noted that one lengthy tome in Lit. Class. (Not that I would do that. *cough,cough* >->). The sad part of my ninja analogy is that instead of gaining the honor of the silver dragon warrior (or whatever it is ninjas get), I get a piece of paper with my name in curly writing. And it doesn't even get you free food. But oh well.

So now that I've completed that ordeal, I was expecting rejection galore from colleges. For some reason when I think of a college board I imagine a scrubbed oaken chamber with two rows of grim old men who smell faintly of talcum powder. I see them sneering my grades, my essays, even that kindergarten drawing of a mentally unstable cat. I feel enraged just thinking about that imaginary room. HOW DARE THEY JUDGE ME!?!

But I was pleseantly surprised. Universities of this and that have been sending me emails constantly with titles such as "We Want You To Attend Our College, Hannah!" and "So Glad I Discovered You!" and "Very Impressed With You, Hannah!" and "Hannah, You're Extraordinary." I'm not even kidding, those last three are actual emails from universities. As flattered as I am, I must pull my self from this lovesick daze of flattery and be reminded that they only want to take all my money. (Hahaha...only I have no money...). Plus most of them are Catholic schools in the middle of the desert. Why?

So this is a message to all you young things out there who are similarly scared of the future and rooms of judgmental old men: One day you too will take a big test and receive loads of flattering fan mail from universities. Just wait.

Laughing Hedgehog,

-Hannah

When I Grow Up I Wanna Be An Old Person!

Lovely Loves,

America (scratch that. pretty much all of mankind) is obsessed with not aging. There's anti-aging creams, anti-aging foods, anti-aging surgery, even anti-aging exercises (pray, check for wrinkles, pray again). Growing old has been labelled tasteless, unfashionable, ugly. Well I don't buy it. While people go inject themselves with toxic paralyzing substances and search for the wrinkle cream of everlasting youth, I embrace old age.

Old age is the age ofexcuses, the backstage pass to life, the skeleton key to the playground over the hill. Once you hit a certain age you can get away with just about anything. Riding the motorized cart through grocery stores? Cutting lines? "Accidentally" tripping rude passerby with your cane? Asking that cute senior citizen to help you cross the road? You're old! Go for it!

The Grandma from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is an special inspiration to me. "You want to go

insane?" some might ask, but I see it as getting to climb on to my neighbor's roofs (or into their

basements), wearing a cowl, and accusing people of being evil Turks. Sounds like fun to me!

Some other inspiring old people:

-My Grandmas!

-Betty White and the Golden Girls

-Maxine

-The Grandma from "Runaway Bride"

-Mrs.Marple

-The bald,

dancing Six Flags guy who is really a woman (no, seriously. thats a bald

cap.)

-God (so old he's ageless)

-Several other cool oldish people who i can't think of at the moment. They're out there, though.

Somewhere...

Plus, who says being old means not being beautiful? Wrinkles are a sign of a life well laughed and a million smiles. They add character and warmth to a perhaps otherwise mundane face. Plus, if I get age spots i can play connect-the-dot whenever I want!There are definite downsides to aging: the dentures, the arthritis, the need to pee at all hours of the night. But hey,occupational hazards, right?

Plus, just imagine the stories I'll tell my Grandchildren. "Back in the days when I had natural teeth we didn't (insert high-tech invention here). No, no. We used a black box called a VHS player and instead of (insert here) we took a smaller black box and inserted it into a slot in the bigger black box. Really!" Just wait till I tell them about washing dishes by hand, or reading paper books, or riding in mammoth gas-guzzling tanks. Hee hee hee.

Night You Young Whippersnappers,

Hannah Hoo