Scaring myself

I am posting this picture to prove that I was indeed 18 once upon a time. I have strategically cropped this photo because it's best if my parents don't see what's in my other hand or who's on the other side of me or, heck, what's going on behind the camera. The point is that I was very young and impressionable and definitely not to blame for anything I might have done. I am pretty sure that this was the night I burned my lips rather painfully on some sort of flaming...um...communion wafer. Actually, LeeAnn and I were just on our way back from chapel when this photo was taken. Then we went straight to bed and read more Anselm, just for fun.

Okay, I can't sustain that for long.

I freaked myself out the other day when a completely foreign sentence tumbled out of my mouth. It may have marked my official entry to adulthood. I am still not sure how to react. Clearly, everything is going to be different now.

What I did when I was a kid is nothing compared to what's going on now.

I felt the snake of adulthood wrap itself around my leg, and now all I can do is struggle from inside the snake.

Now, the sentence is undoubtedly true. However, it is a pretty slippery slope from here to You don't need to know that about me, or We're not talking about me, we're talking about you, or, God forbid, I don't want you to make the same mistakes I did. I don't think I can handle being in my thirties. This is too much. Be careful -- you're going to put someone's eye out with that. Come over here so I can hit you with my cane!

(Parenthetically, I used to know an old lady who hit people with her cane. She went to our church, where my family single-handedly brought the average age down from about 80 to about 60. My brothers and I were always very good during the service, so she never hit us. But every once in a while, the other little old ladies would bring their grandchildren to church. This was sometimes a bit of a train wreck, and we would hear afterwards that there had been some cane action.)