Dear C,

I’ve finally found the perfect moniker to describe our generation of women: Adult Teenagers. Wish I could say I came up with the expression myself, but alas, I happened to read it in a New York Times article today about the dreaded fashion emporium ‘Forever 21′.  For some reason, the article’s author herself seemed unaware of the cultural phenomenon that she had unwittingly named, but then again, a thirty-something woman who still shops in that store is clearly in denial about many  things. For anyone else in doubt, here’s a list of characteristics, to determine whether or not you qualify:

You know you’re an Adult Teenager when:

1) You have your first baby, and immediately start looking round the room for its mother;
2) You are outraged by the demands of parenthood and are still looking for someone to blame;
3) You feel like the first generation of women ever to have had children, and insist on telling the world, ad nauseum, how fantastic/ fulfilling/appalling/ impossible it all is;
4) You insist on wearing low-riders, but spend the entire time yanking your top down;
5) You pretend you’re shopping for your daughter while browsing in Abercrombie & Fitch;
6) Your housekeeper insists on putting away all your clean T-shirts in your pre-teen’s drawers;
7) You still go to rock concerts, but you worry about hearing loss and what to do if there’s a fire;
When something breaks down in your house, you still call your parents to come and fix it;
9) You can’t help feeling you should have made it by now (whatever ‘it’ is);
10) You were raised to believe it was all about you, and you still believe that it is.

Perhaps the scariest part, dear C, is how our children will cope with a generation of geriatric wannabes who can’t even change a light bulb.

Faithfully,

P.

P,

I’d like to say I immediately relate to your opining regarding our demographic, but most of what you claim for us relates, I firmly believe, more to the generation that came before — those narcissists born after the second World War who became hippies. 

Of course my parents were still nearly infants when I happened upon the scene, but they seemed to use my childhood as an excuse to relive theirs.    I definitely have distinct memories of my loving but divorced parents pining after my friends and boyfriends (at least back then there wasn’t the now always possible trauma of dad going after the latter).  Only recently do I believe I’ve raised them well enough to send them alone into the world. 

I do think, therefore, it is now my birthright to experience life as a teenager.  Won’t my own children relish the opportunity to share the experience with mom?  For example, when I Ieave a restaurant and wonder whether any of the three men at the next table are watching my ass as I sashay out of the place, I can giggle about it with one of my daughters.  Things really do come full circle, don’t they?   What again was your point, dearest P? 

Faithfully,

C.