Perfect Ten

You know how when you're ten but you don't want to be ten? When being an adult looked glamorous and you knew that when YOU were an adult, you'd SO eat Fruit Loops everyday, have Twinkies with every meal and stay up late watching as much of the Love Boat and Fantasy Island as you wanted?

(Quick Side Note: When spelling "glamorous" above, I couldn't remember if there was an extra "u" in there. How did I find out? I literally sang Fergie's song G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S aloud to the mutt. I'm not above admitting it, who needs Webster's when you have a former Black Eyed Pea who can spell?)

Ok, so where were we?

Oh yeah ... somewhere along the way, staying up late became less attractive than sleeping in. I actually remember the year when my sister and I didn't wake my parents up on Christmas morning but instead took one look at our respective alarm clocks, rolled over and went back to sleep.

Today I had to work hard to keep myself from going horizontal at every available surface--couch, backseat of my car, seat on the MAX, corner of 3rd & Oak--they all lobbied hard. I was cursing being an adult and wanted to go back to when I was 10, dancing to the Grease soundtrack in my garage with John Greisser and forced to go to bed a 8 p.m. Now as an adult, if I were to go to bed at 8, I'd get a depression diagnosis and prescription to Zoloft faster than Danny and Sandy could sing "Summer Lovin'."

So tonight, after riding the MAX home and being asked by a guy who smelled of pee and alcohol if he could borrow my cell phone to call "his ride," I passed a house in my neighborhood where a little kid had drawn pictures of rainbows, suns, happy faces and houses all over her family's driveway with sidewalk chalk. I love sidewalk chalk. It got me musing over my own little 10 year old life.

So here it is ... my list of what I would do if I were 10 again:

**Tell Chris Richards that he'd hit a home run at his first major league at bat ... and maybe not call him "Chris Cross Applesauce."

**Forget to mention to my parents that "Root Beer Tapper," my favorite game at Chuck E. Cheese, was sponsered by Budwiser.

**Learn how to ski, skate backwards and surf--much easier at 10 than at 30.

**Rollerskate in my garage to ABBA for hours at a time and/or float on a chair in my friend's pool while drinking a Tab ... a girl doesn't need to change everything ... except wait, make that Tab a Lemon Drop.

**Tell my family to suck it up, we ARE going to play Clue over and over again, we WILL go to Hot Dog on a Stick whether they liked it or not and NO, seeing Sylvester, a movie that starred Jake Ryan (!), Melissa Gilbert and a horse 20 times was not "excessive."

**Soak up every minute of MTV--actual music videos, Duran Duran, Madonna and Kurt Loder ... okay, scratch Kurt.

**Slip 'n Slide to my heart's content.

**Ride my bike all over Scripps Ranch before it became the place where track homes came to roost.

**Sidewalk chalk the shit out of my driveway.


Hope your days had more rainbows and happy faces than men smelling of pee and alcohol.

XOXO,
SSG