10 Things That I Should Not Miss (But Still Do)

1. My cassette tape of Bewitched singing “C’est La Vie,” which I won from the DJ that provided the entertainment at a neighbor’s First Communion party when I was seven.
2. Play dates with my best elementary school friend and her dad, who left her mom to live alone with his beagle, Herb, instead. We’d spend Saturday afternoons (his assigned hours of custody) driving over mounds of topsoil in undeveloped lots around town. Sometimes he’d let us ride in the trunk of his car, listen to rap music, and share huge 20-piece chicken nugget boxes from McDonalds between the two of us girls.
3. The addictive, operatic shit show that was my high school relationship, and (to a lesser extent) the boy I used to love who sometimes borrowed my jeans and eyeliner, called himself a gender bender, and then made out with underclassmen in an attempt to reassert his manhood. I broke up with him over Skype and then went to an Iron and Wine concert. Though miserable, it was thrilling to play “adults” in a situation with nothing really at stake.
4. My older sister’s rebellious phase, which began when my parents divorced and continued until the day we dropped her off at college. Her antics (getting wasted at a family party and attempting to climb up the radiator, for example) provided a perfect smoke screen for my own burgeoning habits of self-destruction and left me looking squeaky clean in comparison. She’s an RN now. I write words in NYC sometimes.
5. The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, which was like Harry Potter’s weird, dweeby sci-fi cousin, and from which I have selected the names of my hypothetical children.
6. The years when I could count on one hand how many boys I had kissed, and the worldly satisfaction that came with announcing my “number” during truth or dare…
7. For the matter, add truth or dare, suck and blow, and manhunt to the list as excuses to make out with cute boys from eighth grade homeroom in fits of slobbery passion.
8. The five years during high school and college that I spent grappling with a paralyzing case of anorexia, swimming in the smallest clothing sizes that stores bothered to carry, the blissed-out feeling of being perpetually stoned from lack of nutrients, and a simple, clean-cut explanation that served as my ultimate trump card in any situation: “Sorry, can’t be held accountable for my failed relationships/ shoddy performance in school/ tense familial ties/ aimlessness concerning the future/ bewilderment in the face of the world at large… I’m too sick to do anything about it.” Bulletproof.
9. The vendetta I launched against my new step mother, when I was twelve or so. My best friend at the time helped me concoct downright inhumane schemes against “daddy’s new playmate.” The worst was when we topped off her wine with nail polish remover during a neighborhood Christmas party. I love my step mom now, but casting her as the bane of my existence made me feel like a Disney princess, Harriet the Spy, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch all rolled up into one bratty preteen warrior goddess.
10. The children’s book Where Did I Come From?, which served as my mother’s crutch while explaining to me the Miracle of Life. There was a picture on the back cover of the bearded hippie author of this animated romp through the pleasures of making love. The book featured two old, wrinkly, balding people as its subjects, compared orgasming to an awesome full-body sneeze, and reminded all us kiddies that sex is like jumping rope (in that it’s really fun, but you can’t do it all day). I sat in the bathtub after that particularly hot story time, considered my lady parts, and wondered how long I would have to wait to start having sex. I was in fifth grade at the time.

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