august 11 one

When you're young, you don't know what it's like to not be young, and even though a lot of the time being young sucks, you grow up with some kind of knowledge that when you are not so young you will look back upon the days that you were young with wistfulness and longing. "Youth is wasted on the young," some oldster says, and you believe him, because he's old and he knows stuff, when all he's really saying is he misses not having to pay bills. I don't know what happens between being young and being old, but what I do know is that most people who peak in high school have nowhere to go but down, which is where many of them end up. I did not peak in high school and in a lot of ways I am still on my way up because (to my surprise and delight) I have discovered that getting older is a gift that keeps on giving. I used to dread getting older because I only saw aging through the lens of all the things I wouldn't be able to do, or at least wouldn't be able to do as well (or as easily, or as…