Time, time, see what’s become of me, they chant, and I stare into my pop can for another round of Kitty Versus Life. I never thought little girls were supposed to obsess over their age until they hit twenty-nine or so. I suppose it’s partly the She’s-leaving-home syndrome, but there’s something else. Puddin said the other day it hit her too, how in ten years she’ll be twenty-eight, how ten years ago she thought about when she would be eighteen, and eighteen was grown up.

Eighteen was driving and boyfriends and when we would be pretty, when we would know what our parents knew and when no one would make us eat peas.

Eighteen is driving.

Twenty-eight is unthinkable.

Once I was talking to the Original Gimp and made the passing comment about "when I grow up." He laughed at me in that little way he has and said, sweetie, you’re already grown up.

I hope not. If this is all I get, I’m going to be pissed.

My dad is grown up. He’s sixty-five and beginning to grow those little brown spots on his hands, like fruit that’s slowly rotting. My grandmother’s grown up. She’s eighty-seven. She sits and sits and sits and sits, like Jennyanydots, only she doesn’t whoop it up at night (it’s up to me then to make the Beatles’ Tattoo?). He’s well-meaning but clueless. She’s bored to tears.

I’m both, so I wonder what I have to look forward to.

Tonight I watched Ginger make Puddin up in my blackhole bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub and staring at nothing. There are five or six indentations where I hit the wall with my hairbrush during a temper fit. Not all that long ago, either. Why do I break things? Why do I step on lightbulbs in bare feet? Because I want to know if I can still feel pain, because sometimes I wonder if I am a clone of myself with implanted memories who doesn’t really care.

Today was tomorrow was next year, but it doesn’t matter now.