Weeks ago, I had dinner with TBID and his family at this really swanky place. I felt anxious before, because I don't really enjoy food the way that they do. When I eat something, I don't really want to know how it was made and I don't want to examine every little taste. Eating just doesn't excite me like that.

Fortunately, no one was obnoxious about the meal. I didn't feel pushed to try anything or judged for getting a steak, which is my fancy meal go-to. The focus was really on conversation and getting to know everyone better. I like to think I'm pretty good at being authentic while still pleasing the elders. Parents tend to like me.

TBID's mom started talking about living in 1970's New York Gritty. She and TBID's dad were artsy and had big hair back then. "New York belongs to the young," she said. "You can live here your whole life, but it only feels like yours for a very short time."

A few days later, I stumbled upon the poem below and thought of sending it to her. It reminded me of what she'd said about how being young equates to this feeling of ownership and control. I ran it by TBID who constructively commented, "Uhh, it sounds like you're commenting on the fact that she's old."

Oops. My (almost) bad. Regardless of whether or not she thinks she owns the city, I don't regard her as preposterous, as the poem says. Still, I'm glad I didn't just e-mail her. That could've been harder to explain than why I barely touched my vegetables.

I'm saving my first major faux pas for the holiday season, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

One day you will reach...

One day you will reach a bend in your life.
Time will curve like a wind
and after that the young
will no longer be afraid of you
the way they ought to be,

the way they were when you were minus fifty
and had a glare like winter,
and kept men's souls in cough syrup bottles
and could cause dogs to burst into flames.

Instead of fear, you'll be handed
a kind of dutiful respect
that isn't really serious
and will find yourself an object
of secret jocularity
like a preposterous expensive hat.
The glittering eyes of the old aren't gay

or if gay, they have the gaiety
of things that have no power.
Wallpaper with pink flowers.
Buds in bud vases. Butterflies
drunk of fermenting pears.
Drunks in the gutter.

Drunks in the gutter singing-
I forgot to add that.

-Margaret Atwood