How Did I Get Here?

Today I volunteered at my daughter's school. They were testing all of the children's hearing and vision. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Maybe I would shuffle the kids from one line to the other. Give a "quiet down" look to any kid that started to act up. But test their vision? Don't they have more qualified people than me?

I'm not stupid, but it is really hard to see myself as competent enough to assess someone's vision. Maybe it's because inside I'm still young and inexperienced. I forget that I'm an adult. I forget that I'm someone's mother, even if that someone is standing right next to me.

Last year I volunteered in my daughter's art class. The woman running the class was speaking to the students when she mentioned her age. She was 36 - my age. I stood there, shocked. Surely she couldn't be the same age as me! She was mature, knew what she was talking about and she was an ADULT. I think that was the first time it really hit me that I'm an adult too.

When I see a doctor and they are close to my age I start to freak out. If they are my age they are WAY too young to have the responsibility of any one's life! I still can't believe that people I went to college with are nurses, lawyers and teachers; or they have jobs with VP and Director in their titles.

Am I the only one who looks around me and can't figure out how I got here? How did I go from being the kid in school to the college student to the married woman to being some one's mother? It happened over the span of decades, but it was so fast that my brain hasn't caught up to my aging body.

In my head I'm still that goofy kid. I still like to make up songs when I'm bored. At six my daughter still thinks that is fun. I'm sure in the not-so-distant future she will scowl when I do that because she is standing on her tippi-toes and stretching up as high as she can so she can touch adulthood sooner.

Sometimes I think that I can't be the only one who feels 18 inside while the outside is slowly morphing into my mother. But to not be alone in this feeling is kind of scary because that means all of those people in whom I trust my life are freaked out teenagers inside. Is that stoic airline pilot wondering how he went from paper airplanes to being responsible for hundreds of lives? Is there a surgeon that stands over his patient, ready to cut, wondering how a kid who used to eat paste can now put his hands inside someone's body?

I shudder to think about such things. So I'm going to tell myself that those people, those with so much responsibility, are a little older inside than I am. They were always surgeons and airline pilots inside. I can't picture those people doing keg stands in college or making out with some stranger in a bar. No. I need to picture those people - those responsible people - as diligent students who enjoyed a discussion on Chekhov and never understood what the big deal was about partying.

Unfortunately for all of the kids at my daughter's elementary school, those people weren't available today. They got me instead. I pointed to the eye chart, watched them point which way the E was facing and did my best to get it right when I said, "Yup. 20/20." and sent them on their way. But if I'm the only thing that stands between those children and blindness, I hope they are good with white canes.