Is it Judgment Day already? I was just getting started!

I hope when I die my Judgment Day moment will turn out to be like those pictures of me in ninth grade when I thought I looked so horrible, and in retrospect turned out to look pretty much like all the other ninth grade girls in the world.

Not The Ugliest Ninth Grade Girl In The World, which is what I thought I was.

That’s all I’m hoping for, I just don’t want to stand out as a sinner. I’m hoping that in comparison to say, Jack the Ripper, who hopefully will be right in front of me in the Judgment Day line, they will say, “Good job. You don’t have to spend the next ten thousand years shoveling coal,” or whatever it is St. Peter's helpers say to Moms Who Didn't Do All the Things The Other Moms Did When They Compared Themselves To Other Moms Who They Thought Were Perfect, Which They Did Constantly. (If that's a category, which it should be.)

I’m thinking about this because it’s my birthday and I have a physical coming up soon and, honestly, I feel like I’m getting ready for the Judgment Day. I don’t want to say how old I am, but when I was born, Americans were still thinking of themselves as people who won wars for people who needed their help.

The other day I almost said, “I don’t feel that old inside” to someone younger than me, and I stopped myself in the nick of time. When old people used to say that to me I would think, “Ohmygosh, how could you NOT?! How can old people be surprised that they’re old?"

Well, let me tell you, we are, and you will be too.

Inside of me there lives a moody sixteen-year old listening to the same four songs over and over while waiting for the future father of her children to come by and honk in his father's mint green and white Ford Fairlane. At the same time, I'm still a hugely pregnant thirty-something wondering if this will be my last baby, and a confused fifty-year old trying to figure out where my dad’s insurance policies went.

But I also categorize people as always having been the same age as they are now, forever. I look at my old lady friends and in my mind they were always the same old ladies they are now. It’s hard to imagine them as giggly teenagers nervous about their first crush. And the young moms in our neighborhood will always be “the young moms” and kids will always be “the kids.” Like they will never change.

I also think about how much I don’t want to leave this earth to these upstarts who are taking my place.

Right now, I love my current dog of the five or six we’ve had, my current car of the I-don’t-know-how-many we’ve had. I don’t want to leave the beautiful blue sky above me or my grandkids or my neighborhood or any of my life. I am sooo not ready for any version of Judgment Day—particularly with my doctor.

But if that means it’s my turn to be The Old Person, I’ll deal with it.

As they say, “It beats the alternative.”