Seventeen

Tonight, I had to drive me (non-crazy!) roommate to pick up her car at the shop, and on the way back I was alone, just me and the music and the breeze.
I have a little confession to make: I just Love the song "Stacy's Mom." I know, I know, how terribly juvenile. But, as I listened to that song, and drove, and felt the breeze, I realized that this breif moment of blissful freedom is something that is so often missing from my life.

"Stacy's mom has got it goin' on." - Ummm, who doesn't remember being in high school and finding some unavailable adult unspeakably attractive. There's something so freeing in the acknowledgment of this fact, espescially as the wind whips through the opened window and I sing into my water bottle - turned - microphonen.
"She's all I want, and I've waited for So Long." The perpetual plea of adolescence, and yet, in so many ways, that's still the way I feel. Do you know how long I"ve waited for independence, for sex, for doing things My Way, for not feeling so incredibly bound to my family? Do you know how long - a long frickin' time. And yet, as I do crazy-car-dance moves that I would never, EVER do anywhere else, it feels like somehow, some way, I might get what I want - even if I have waited.
"And I know that you think it's just a fantasy - but since your dad walked out, your mom could use a guy like me." Mmmm, yes, the fantasy. I have so many of them, and they all feel so far away, so very far from any truth that could ever be. And also, there's the responsibility I feel, a responsibility that I think a lot of adolescents feel for ways in which parent's have failed them. I point my finger and sing so loud, almost to the point of yelling.
"I know it might be wrong, but I'm in love with Stacy's mom." I think this is the part I love most. I've spent so much of my life taking on that responsibiltiy that my parents didn't take - I was responsible for my infant brother, responsible for making perfect grades, responsible for my mother's emotions. And yet, damn it!, there are things I want that have nothing to do with these responsibilities that are not really mine and as I sing this line, they seem to melt away, seem to fly off into the music, into the breeze, into the cool, smoggy, California air. They are gone, and I sing with exhiliration, at the top of my lungs, just for a moment realizing that this is probably the way I was Supposed to feel at 17.
And then the moment ends, and I am brought back to reality by the wave of another driver. - Apparently he liked my dance moves. I freeze in embarassment for a moment, but then think, darn it, I want to dance!
And so I do.