I like older people, and I don’t mean geriatrics that may bequeath me large sums of money or moth-eaten stoles. I like older people who have more experience than my peers and me and generously offer the biased roadmap they’ve scribbled in perilous attempts to navigate potholed adulthood. When you’re older, I think you’re more comfortable believing you’re right. Or certainly less shy about coming right out, pun intended, and saying it. Younger people don’t want to step on too many toes or be arrogant, so there’s a lot of relativity in everything. Is that shirt red? Well, some people might say it’s red. Of course, color-blind people - who are just as good as non-color-blind people can’t determine if something is red at all. Or you know, burgundy, which the shirt might also be.
The older people in my life are in their late twenties to late thirties. I didn’t seek most of them out, but I found myself amused and welcomed by them. And then someone made a pop culture reference I coulda known, I shoulda known with all the nostalgic VH1 programming and such, and I was outed as the young one. It was fine by me. I like hearing about other people’s experiences and what life lessons they learned from them. I then usually like to make the same mistakes they did, because it will be different for me. I say this only a tiny bit tongue-in-cheek.
There’s a new person I want to invite into the fold, but she’d be the first of a completely different demographic. I don’t have any fifty-plus Jewish women in my social circle. Certainly none that are writers who knew Meg Ryan before Restylane. But why not Nora Ephron? I recently read I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman. At times, it was hard to sympathize with my new friend. “So you’re complaining about your rent being jacked up and you make more than $250,000 a year? Boo freakin’ hoo!” Or “You’re whining that your hair is unruly, but you can afford to take it to professionals twice a week who will fragrantly mollify it? Shut up!”
Despite the fact that Ephron can’t accept she’s a priss in rumpled clothing, I like her. She owns up to the fact that President Kennedy never made a pass at her - and solely her - when she worked at The White House. There’s no shame when she says she’s a woman men easily get over. And she hates how her aging neck looks! There’s a certain acceptance there, and it’s refreshing. She uses turtlenecks to cope, which is exactly how I deal with my insecurities – cover them up, forget about them, and forge on ahead. And also? I like turtlenecks.
There’s an essay toward the end of the book called “What I Wish I’d Known.” Not surprisingly, it’s comprised of a lot of advice I can’t totally appreciate, like “Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.” But there’s one gem that I’ve never heard from anyone else, but that I believe with the intensity of a whirling dervish or the snaking line outside of a chic frozen yogurt place:
“Whenever someone says the words, ‘Our friendship is more important than this,’ watch out, because it almost never is.”
Brava, Ms. Ephron! This piece of advice is all too topical, having recently been betrayed by some people, one of whom I thought was on her way to being a friend. Someone I tried to trust, but had to distance myself from, and then cut off altogether when I realized she wasn’t really a nice person. Someone who stabbed me in the back rather than the front, where Oscar Wilde said true friends do.
I don’t intend to confront her. I believe – and my elders support this – that in the end, everyone will get theirs, and that I shouldn’t stoop that low in any activity outside of yoga.
Besides, the girl has mad cellulite and lacks the wherewithal to cover it up.
