My existentialism never came on prom night.

I stared a little longer than necessary at them because they knew where Mr. Boertje's class was. I watched them because they were done with their gym requirements for graduation. I was intimidated by them because their clothes didn't look like they'd just made it through four years of Catholic school, with their shirts with words on them, and their jeans nicely beaten in.
Then, a few years later, I was shuddering after a new group of people. Those who knew the best places to park around campus. The people who had their elementary algebra classes under their belt. Those who had the bands on their Apples playing over speakers at big parties in houses I wanted to live in, with complicated beats and complex, meaningless band names.

Yeah. They were all the ones a few years older than I was. The cool kids, if you will. Never, ever in my life have I been confused for one of them. The closer I get to their age, actually, the further away they get.

Now, they're the ones with the hybrid cars, the iPods with sleeker designs than my own. They're the ones with clothes that match. Homes that look like they're just sitting around, waiting for dwell to show up. Aaan-y-time now.

See, my clothes fit fine now, but they don't necessarily match. My car gets OK gas mileage, but I'd park Dave's around the block if my dwell-worthy friends got the call about the magazine shoot. I don't remember the last band I found. My furniture comes from seven different places, and relies heavily on you assuming particle board is real wood.

So why can't I ever catch up?

I'm having a bit of a funky crisis right now, as my birthday cake bakes in the oven, because even though I'm where I thought I'd be at this point in life, nothing is as clean or as match-y as I thought. The cool kids are still cooler.

Maybe, I'm realizing, that's OK. Because I don't know if you've read dwell, but it's a lot of work to make a coffee table shine like that, all the time. I think I gotta just let that one go.