Oldest Living Teenager – Back Again & Up Too Early

You know how sometimes you have to sneak out of the house early in the morning to walk the dog?  And you don’t have time to change so you just throw your husband’s sweatshirt on over your PJ’s thinking no one in the world could possibly be out there at this hour?  It’s a country road, after all.  And doggy needs to go out.  And then you get outside and look down at the ridiculous cut-off PJ’s that are showing, plus the multi-colored flowered socks plus your green clogs ’cause that’s all there was to put on real quickly?  And you look across the street and see that nice mom with her 2 kids, waiting for the school bus, so you just keep walking, eyes to your dog in case that makes you invisible?  And then there seems to be dozens and dozens of cars passing by and just when you convince yourself probably nobody notices what you look like anyway (and certainly no one sees the big clumps of hair sticking up all over your head because you wore a barrette to bed last night after you washed and set your hair and it got all super-wavy-curly plus the barrette is still in there, somewhere, somewhere) – well, that’s the moment you feel like “Hey – what’s the big deal?”  So a few people see an early-morning dog-walker inappropriately dressed to go outside (I mean, I wasn’t even wearing my newer, nice PJ’s – no, I was wearing the ones that are all old and ripped.)  Yeah.  Anyway, that’s the moment – when I’m thinking it really isn’t a big thing – when I hear a louder engine.  And I look up just for a moment to see it.  It’s the moment when you’ve finally rationalized that really – no one would even notice you – the same moment when the big (much bigger when so close up!), yellow school bus packed with kids looking out the windows passes by oh-so -slowly.