Tampons & Barbie Dolls

The things nobody tells you about growing up, getting older, and everything in between.

There comes a point in your life when you look around and wonder how in the hell you ended up here. Not necessarily in a bad way. More in the sense that if somebody had handed you a brochure at eighteen detailing what the next thirty years were going to look like, you’d have probably laughed, asked who wrote this ridiculous shit, and demanded a refund.

I mean, seriously. Somewhere between being a kid with absolutely no concept of responsibility and becoming a middle-aged adult who gets genuinely excited about household appliances, something happened. I’m not entirely sure when, and I certainly don’t remember signing anything, but apparently I’m a grown-up now. At least according to the government. My behavior occasionally suggests otherwise.

When you’re young, you have this wonderfully delusional notion that adulthood comes with answers. You imagine that one day you’ll wake up, understand taxes, know exactly what you want out of life, and possess some sort of magical ability to make sensible decisions. You’ll have a career, a home, somebody to love, and perhaps a respectable collection of matching towels.

What nobody tells you is that you can have all of those things and still stand in your kitchen wondering why you walked in there in the first place.

And that’s where the tampons and Barbie dolls come in. Not literally. Although I’ve lived long enough to know better than to rule anything out.

I grew up in a time when the world had a fairly specific idea of how things were supposed to work. Boys did boy things. Girls did girl things. There were rules about what you wore, how you behaved, what you played with, and what your future was supposed to look like. Some of those rules were spoken aloud. Others were simply understood, which is interesting because nobody ever seemed particularly interested in asking whether they made any goddamn sense.

Barbie had her dream house, her convertible, her perfectly proportioned wardrobe, and an impressive collection of careers. Ken had excellent hair, questionable anatomical details, and apparently no real purpose other than standing around looking available. Looking back, perhaps Ken had adulthood figured out better than the rest of us.

The funny thing about childhood is how much time we spend wanting to escape it. We can’t wait to grow up, make our own decisions, stay out as late as we want, and do whatever the hell we please. We dream about independence without understanding that independence comes with utility bills, insurance premiums, plumbing emergencies, and the occasional realization that you’re the person who has to buy toilet paper. Nobody tells you that freedom and responsibility are basically a package deal, and there’s no customer service department to call when you’re dissatisfied.

I was a talkative kid. Curious, outgoing, and more than capable of finding trouble without particularly looking for it. I grew up in a world where we drank water from garden hoses, entertained ourselves without a screen in front of our faces, and occasionally did things that, by today’s parenting standards, would probably warrant a family meeting and a psychological evaluation.

We didn’t analyze every moment of our childhood. We lived it. Some of it was wonderful, some of it was confusing, and some of it was the kind of thing you don’t fully understand until you’re decades removed from it.

And then came adolescence. Good Lord.

What an absolutely ridiculous period of human development. You’re convinced you’re mature enough to run your own life while simultaneously making decisions that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you should not be trusted with unsupervised access to your own hormones.

Everything feels monumental. Every friendship is forever. Every heartbreak is catastrophic. Every embarrassing moment is surely going to follow you to the grave. You’re trying to figure out who you are while everyone around you seems remarkably comfortable telling you who you ought to be.

At that age, being different can feel like an enormous burden. You spend so much energy trying to fit into whatever mold has been presented that you don’t realize the mold itself might be the problem.

That’s something I wish I’d understood earlier.

Eventually, you find your way into young adulthood, where the mistakes become more expensive and the consequences tend to stick around longer. You work. You fall in love. You make friends. You lose friends. Sometimes you confuse being needed with being loved, being busy with being successful, and being agreeable with being a good person. You collect experiences like souvenirs. Some you display proudly. Others you shove into a drawer and hope nobody ever asks about them. And somewhere along the way, you begin constructing a life.

Not necessarily the life you planned, mind you. The life that happens while you’re busy trying to execute the plan. I have a husband, a home, dogs, responsibilities, and an assortment of interests that would probably confuse the hell out of my younger self. I mean, I’ve spent a considerable portion of my adult life in the brewing and restaurant business, dealing with people, personalities, expectations, and the endless parade of absurdities that come with hospitality. And now I also raise quail.

Quail.

If you’d told me thirty years ago that I’d find genuine satisfaction in the daily activities of a bunch of small birds, I probably would’ve suggested you seek medical attention. Yet here we are. And somehow, it makes perfect sense.

That’s the beautiful absurdity of getting older. Things that once seemed completely insignificant can become meaningful, while things you once considered absolutely essential barely deserve a second thought. I’ve also discovered that aging has a particularly twisted sense of humor.

Your body begins making executive decisions without consulting you. Your eyesight becomes negotiable. Your metabolism apparently files for early retirement. Things that used to happen automatically now require planning, adequate hydration, and occasionally a decent night’s sleep.

At twenty-five, you could stay out until three in the morning, drink too much, sleep for four hours, and somehow function the next day. In your forties, you can throw your back out reaching for a sock. And yet, with all of that comes something I wouldn’t trade for the world.

Perspective.

I’ve learned that being liked by everyone is neither possible nor particularly desirable. I’ve learned that saying no doesn’t require a written explanation, a notarized affidavit, or a heartfelt apology. I’ve learned that some relationships are meant to last a lifetime, while others are there to teach you something before they end.

I’ve learned that grief doesn’t operate on a schedule. That love can be both incredibly simple and maddeningly complicated. That marriage isn’t about finding somebody who makes every day perfect, but about finding somebody you’d still choose to navigate the imperfect days with. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned that you don’t owe the world a performance.

For years, I think many of us spend our lives playing different versions of ourselves. There’s the person we are at work, the person we are around family, the person we are with friends, and the person we become when we’re alone with our thoughts. We adjust. We accommodate. We make ourselves smaller or louder depending on what the room seems to require. Then one day, something changes.

Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s loss. Maybe it’s therapy, experience, or simply reaching the point where you no longer have the energy to entertain everybody else’s expectations. But you begin realizing that the person you’ve been trying so hard to become might not be nearly as interesting as the person you’ve been all along. And that brings me back to those tampons and Barbie dolls.

Two completely ordinary objects that, depending on your age, your upbringing, and your understanding of the world, can represent an extraordinary amount of nonsense we’ve been taught about how life is supposed to work. What’s appropriate. What’s expected. What’s masculine. What’s feminine. What’s normal. What’s embarrassing. What belongs to whom.

We spend so much of our younger years trying to sort everything into neat little categories. Then life comes along, dumps the entire contents of the toy box onto the floor, and tells us to figure it out. And eventually, if we’re lucky, we stop trying to put everything back exactly where somebody else said it belonged.

I’ve come to appreciate the mess. Not every part of it, of course. There are chapters of my life I wouldn’t care to revisit, decisions I’d probably make differently, and people I wish I could sit across from one more time. But I also recognize that the good, the bad, the ridiculous, and the downright painful have all contributed to the person sitting here today.

A person who still laughs at inappropriate things. Who occasionally says something that probably should’ve remained an inside thought. Who appreciates good beer, good company, a comfortable home, and the increasingly rare luxury of a day without unnecessary bullshit. I’m not the person I thought I’d be at eighteen.

Thank God.

That kid had plenty of enthusiasm, a questionable understanding of consequences, and absolutely no idea what was coming. But he also had something I hope I never lose: curiosity. A willingness to laugh. An ability to find something interesting in the ordinary. And a certain refusal to take the world quite as seriously as the world seems to take itself.

So perhaps growing up isn’t about becoming the polished, perfectly organized version of adulthood we were sold as children. Perhaps it’s about becoming comfortable with the contradictions. Being responsible and ridiculous. Strong and vulnerable. Confident and occasionally completely clueless. Knowing when to take life seriously and when to look around the room and say, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Because at the end of the day, life isn’t a Barbie Dreamhouse. It isn’t neatly packaged, accessorized, or accompanied by instructions. It’s a collection of surprises, compromises, triumphs, disappointments, and bizarre little moments that somehow add up to a story. And if I’ve learned anything from mine, it’s that the best parts often weren’t in the original plan.

Sometimes life hands you a Barbie doll. Sometimes it hands you a box of tampons. And sometimes it hands you a bag of quail feed and the realization that you’ve become the kind of person who has opinions about poultry. Whatever it hands you, you might as well enjoy the ride.

Because growing old is inevitable.

Growing up, apparently, is optional.