See For Miles And Miles

Mary opines:

A quick glance at the calender took her breath way. It couldn't be. Had it been that long? She looked around and slowly the feeling became a somewhat grim certainty. Though the location of her desk, her duties, and many of the faces had changed the harsh reality was that tomorrow it will have been 20 years ago that she started this job. Although there were many accomplishments along the way and her pay had risen dramatically from her meager first check (in point of fact, that was just a testament not to how much she currently made but rather to how truly low her pay once was) she was struck with a profound sense of melancholy. If tomorrow made twenty years that she was employed here and her 40th birthday was coming up in September the reality was that she had spent half of her life in a job she was ordered to get after being caught smoking pot in Johnson park. She stared blankly out the window at the tops of the bare trees, then wrote a note to herself to remind her daughter not to smoke pot in public places...

Ah, the folly of youth! If only we knew then what we know now: some of our high school friends would join the Army to see the world, and some because they knew where to find better drugs. Some would go on to universities and seek refuge in the academe, if you could call what they found there "refuge." Some of our friends married young and remarried only slightly older. Some of us took our Budding Bad Girl act on the road and came back credentialed. Mary's philosophical observation made me laugh so hard I almost peed.

Miss Sasha, if you're reading the blog today please remember it is your mother's duty to pass along her - which is to say my - worldly wisdom, no matter how hilarious its acquisition: Don't smoke pot in public places...