To start off I finally was able to get my hair done after a few weeks of watching my natural color grow out more and more. Let’s just say my natural, ashy light brown does not fit my skin tone or my personality. With the extra 2 1/2 inches came my first officially noticed gray hair. Then came a second one. Yikes! Not like I didn’t know they existed (thank you hair stylist and boyfriend), but as long as my hair remained highlighted, I could pretend they weren’t really there. A win for me!
But this is a milestone year. I will be turning forty in December. And though it’s going to be just another day, and just another year older, I don’t feel forty. I don’t feel old. I look it more and more, and I see the lines and loss of elasticity, but my personality and body don’t feel like they’ve hit that mark yet.
And yet, so it begins.
It’s happening!
What is happening you might ask? Oh, just the “back in my day” stories. It’s not like I haven’t noticed me stating how things used to be or that such and such place used to be open fields or whatever the case may be, but yesterday marked the first time I fully recognized just how blatant it had become. I could no longer ignore my comments of “way back when” were happening more often.
Let’s set the stage, shall we. My regular stylist, who is a few years older than me, was advised by her doctor to take it easy for a couple weeks due to health reasons. Salon let me know I could reschedule with her when she gets back or I could schedule with another stylist. I’m super picky about my hair (it’s my single beauty splurge), but remember those grays were showing, and I didn’t want to see them anymore. So I bit my lip, took the jump to get my long overdue hair into the shop for a tune up, and I went ahead and booked with a stylist I had never met. She was super sweet, a mother of two, and thirty this year. She did an excellent job, btw, but while you allow someone to play with your hair, there’s a lot of time sitting in a chair and coming up with conversation topics.
Mind you I am not super social. The older I get the more I avoid human contact and small talk. I am not a conversationalist unless I know you, and we have reached that level of comfort, although there are some people in the world that are very easy to talk to even when you don’t know their names and end up never running into them again. Imagine ships passing in the night. You know how the line goes. So while I am sitting in the chair with a mask (requirement to be in the salon) covering half my face and blanketed in basically a tarp, I was trying to find worthwhile subject matter we could discuss. It would be even more weird if I just sat there and didn’t say a damn thing. It would be extremely rude if I just whipped out the phone and either kept up with what I could for work or played sudoku nonstop.
The music playing over the speakers was an easy topic. It was horrible, country music neither of us had ever heard before. We couldn’t even figure out who was singing the songs. Not only that, but there was an awful cover of “Heaven Let Your Light Shine Down”, and we were both grateful for that one to end. So music. Music became a topic. Which, of course we had already discussed COVID-19 issues, I just rolled the music into how COVID will affect future concerts. We talked about concerts we had been to. She mentioned she had wished she’d gone to a George Straight concert last year when he was in town. I jump in with “I got to see him at the old Cowboys stadium in Irving for the George Straight Country Music Festival!” So here we go. Setting the stage for the backstory of days long past from my youth. Good Lord. I mention when that concert took place, ‘96 I believe. Holy crap! That was 24 years ago! Then another concert I went to back in ‘97 at the Texas Motor Speedway. It had just been built and basically held two large concerts before even having a race. The first was a country fest. No. I did not go to that one. I did however go to their Rock Fest ‘97!!! Let me tell you! Awesome concert!!!! Bush, No Doubt, Counting Crows, the Nixons, Collective Soul, and more. It was so kick ass!!!
So it may not seem like much to the average reader, but I have now noticed just how much those old stories kick in to create a connection with a younger crowd. The older party explaining how they are still relevant and how their experiences can correlate with the experiences yet to be had by the younger party. The younger party struggling to follow along since they don’t quite realize just how cool that story really is in the mind of the older party. No wonder the youth have a hard time listening to stories about the days of old. No wonder the majority of people I know don’t have a passion for studying history (yes, some of you are crazy for wanting to do that, imo). It’s right up there with telling someone they can’t do something. They’re going to do what they want to do, no matter how much you may try to explain what happened to you and how badly it turned out. It’s allowing them to touch the flame to not want to touch it again. Same with experiences. The older we get, the more we experience, and the more we want to share to keep those memories alive or relevant or teach or inspire. But that younger generation, they want to have their own experiences, and it’s hard to set time aside to hear about someone else’s when you just want to make your own.
With this new “happening“ I now want to hear those stories I didn’t quite appreciate when I was younger. The stories of how my mom had actually gone to a Beatles concert and even experienced Inna Gadda Da Vida. The stories of my dad taking out his metallic blue glitter dune buggy, the same one he would take me and the neighborhood girls out for sno-cones as a little kid on hot, Texas summer evenings. All of those things that get talked about over and over again, but they just went in one ear and right out the other, because they couldn’t be appreciated yet. Now I know.
Now I’m listening.
-Bonnie
And if I have any typos in this thing, I couldn’t care less. I’m typically picky about grammar, but I just don’t have time to fix all those written mistakes when I have so much more listening to do now. 😉
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Bonnie’s Beach 🏖 