turn and face the strange

this afternoon after a jog and while eating a delicious lunch at millie's i told krista that my dad had changed. that he was different than he was when i was younger. krista said that it was weird to be older and change. and i thought about it and it's not weird, what is weird is that we think we think we stop changing, like at some point we will reach this state of perfection, or maybe dejection, and just stop evolving. i think i definitly thought this way when i was little. i remember making this book when i was ten and we had sections like past, present, future. i drew a picture of me in the future. i had long brown hair and i wore knee boots. fourteen years later i am nothing like that picture. my hair is cut short and i don't own a pair of knee boots. and i'm glad. but what if i met my ten-year-old self somehow and she wouldn't even recognize me. she be looking for the lady with the long, gorgeous hair and the knee boots. i'd probably be carrying a brief case. it is so easy to picture what you'll look like and be like when you're younger. you're so sure of it. but i can't picture what i would look like or be like fifteen years from now, nearing forty. i am working on this story and the character in it has just graduated from high school, and it is this point in your life that everyone anticipates, but the outcome is always different than the one imagined, and it is sort of this first disappointment, or realization that you don't really know anything, in the series of these that becomes someone's life that i'm trying to capture. but it's hard.