My oldest grandchild turns 17 today. Already? It was just the other day that I was 17, wasn’t it? About 51 years ago to tell the truth. It doesn’t seem that long. . . except for everything that has happened since then.
Part of me is still 17 as I remember it. I was well into my senior year in high school on my 17th birthday. I still had braces on my teeth. I had fallen in love with the boy who would be the older boy I married a few years later. I was trying to figure out college and keep my grades up and was active in school activities and I played a lot. At 17, we were the leaders of the school, the promise of the future. Until we got to college and had to start over again.
When I was 17, I worked a little, mainly tutoring, but most of my friends didn’t have jobs. We studied and played. We were the lucky ones. We never knew what really went on in some of our classmates’ homes until many years later. It was a time when people kept family secrets, when horrible things weren’t mentioned. Life wasn’t as innocent as we were led to believe.
Seventeen was the end of my sheltered years, when I left home for the first time for college. It was the end of the innocence for our country when our President was assassinated and we watched it all on television, over and over, although it wasn’t the 24 hr news cycle we have today.
When I was 17, we still used rotary dial phones and had to call the operator to make a long distance call. We wrote letters to tell our grandmothers what was going on in our lives because long distance calls were special. No direct dial long distance yet. Technology was having a long cord on your phone so you could take it into a closet for privacy. We walked a lot because not everyone had a car. We went to the library for information because there were no computers.
Seventeen was a year of introspection for me. I read a lot, a lot of heavy thoughts. I was in the throes of being a new intellectual. Mixed with being a fun-loving teenager. How does that work – being an intellectual teenager? Really? And, I’m sure my parents didn’t understand me at all, because what parents ever do?
Mostly, seventeen was fun. When I watch the movie “American Graffiti,” I see my senior year. Move the scene from Los Angeles to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and you have my high school years, accurate to the dress, the music, the dances, the kids. All the fun and angst and watching the world from a new perspective as you move from adolescence into pre-adulthood. Some friends were getting there faster, getting married, getting jobs, having babies. It was a time of change.
I’m lucky to have had a life that I can remember with such affection. Very lucky. I can see that now, looking back all those years.
My advice for my grandkids as they turn 17 is simple. Enjoy, take it all in. Learn from what you see and take it all with you on this exciting journey of life.
When I was 17. . . it was a very good year.
Confetti Thoughts 