Sweet T. and Biscuits

                I remember when I thought that being a grown-up was the most exciting thing in the world. Remember when you’d add a few months onto your age so you could tell people you were 13, instead of 12 and ¾? Remember when you thought that having your own house and your own car and your own children/free manual labor was the ultimate freedom, and you couldn’t grow up fast enough? Every time you’d tell a grown-up that you couldn’t wait to be older, they’d give you the clichéd “Don’t grow up too fast, kid. Someday you’ll wish you were younger." You thought, “Yeah well, you don’t even eat Oreos for breakfast every day like I will when I grow up, of course you hate being an adult”. To me, as a fiercely independent only child with loving but textbook-definition helicopter parents who packed me gross healthy lunches that no one ever wanted to trade me for a Fruit Rollup, being a grownup was the absolute dream. In a lot of ways, it is pretty great. We get to drink alcohol and

“I’m going to try to say less snarky things about other girls”, I told Tom last Friday night. We were at a formal for Harvard Med School students, hanging out at a table eating hors d’oeuvres and drinking from the open bar. “That’s wonderful, sweetie,” he said, genuinely excited at the idea of less snark for all womankind. “I really think that’s a huge problem among women, and it definitely doesn't do you all any favors for working together for gender equality…” He went on, but my eyes had glazed over as I re-fixated on the two girls who had sparked my need to make the statement in the first place. “Yeah, yeah, I totally agree, and I’m going to start doing better,” I replied, “but first, I have to say that those girls over there look like total hookers.” I like to think of the movie “Mean Girls” as a kind of snapshot into the way females treat each other. Recap for the five people on Earth who haven’t seen it: Cady Heron starts at a new school, befriends some fringe kids, and t

When I started college, I had a lot of clichéd “fight the system” ideas of what I wanted my life to be like. I wanted to travel the world like a glamorous gypsy, falling in and out of love with exotic strangers, but never staying put because I was too busy making world-changing contributions to society. I never wanted to get married, but I wanted to have kids and raise them by myself during these travels, juggling being a single mother, world traveler, and society changer with great ease. Basically, I wanted to be the main character from Chocolat (which I highly recommend watching, and only partially because it’s about two of my favorite things: young Johnny Depp and chocolate). I rarely engaged in any meaningful romances, cutting them off when they got too serious, and generally having an awesome time. I was going to be perfect balance of a modern woman-strong, independent, brilliant, kind, and never allowing a man to define herself or her life trajectory. Essentially, I was stupid.