And sorta frightening.
Oldest turns 18 today.
I remember when she was much younger--maybe 5 turning 6--and I went in to wake her up one morning. She opened her eyes and looked around, then sat up and started looking quizzically at her arms and legs. "What's the matter, sugar?"
"I though you said I was going to be a big girl on my birthday!"
Seems as though all of Mom and Dad's talk back then about turning the magical age of six and being a big girl was translated in her mind as meaning she'd wake up on her birthday and be full grown.
Having now lived with her through all of the less-than-pleasant turmoil of the intervening 12 or so years since that time, I have a feeling that having now reached the age of majority, she has the firm belief she is finally an actual grown up.
And, well, you know, good luck with that.
No, really.
I don't wish for any of my kids to have to endure bad times and bad things, but I know that being human, those things do come to us all. But I also know that despite my best efforts and intentions, she will meet the adult world woefully unprepared.
We've tried to show her, tell her, make her, cajole her into seeing and understanding and learning, and I know a few scraps of that made it through to her consciousness, but I also know most of what we've tried to make plain simply went into the mental shred file.
And that's a failure on my part.
But at least I can take some comfort in knowing that it wasn't failure by simple inaction. Somewhat like Wile E. Coyote (Genius), of whom it can never be said that his high rate of disaster was due to his being lazy and innattentive, I am perversely gratified in some small way that although my big box of ACME Parenting Skills blowed up real good, it was nonetheless spectacular and noticeable, and occasionally entertaining to viewers.
If only real life were like the cartoons, I'd be a bit less concerned for the fate of my own little roadrunner.
But, there she is, in the eyes of the law and in her mind's eye, an adult.
Like I said, good luck with that.
Regarding the recent dustup and handwringing over whether one candidate or another would be where he or she is in the Presidential race were it not for various physical characteristics, one thing is exceedingly clear: the number of elected officials who have attained their positions based solely upon their own brilliance or competence is vanishingly small, almost to the point of being non-existent.