In for a Penny, In for a Pound

Some days being around the 20-something crowd made me feel like a million bucks. I had more energy because I was trying to keep up and I could stay up past 10PM. Other days it was  like Barbarella interrupting the State of the Union. Full of intolerance and looks that I gave my grandma during high school. Today was the latter.

Just before leaving on our 10-day holiday in England, we'd moved to a new condo. That's wrong. WE didn't move. I moved us. Mitch had flown home, Grey wasn't back on the island yet and Jameson was in school. After I'd purged our belongings down to the necessities, I'd overstuffed our island hooptie several times a day to move.  Across the street.  Our new space was considerably smaller, had only one bathroom, lacked the modern appliances of  life at RBC and had no shortage of ants. I found it disappointing.  To emphasize my disappointment, I often used the word "rubbish" (which I'd picked up in the UK).  However, I found the 1500 dollars I was saving monthly uplifting.  Brilliant!

It was during one of my "brilliant" moments in our new condo that  I decided to walk over to RBC, our old haunt, to talk with my friend, Michelle. She wanted to hear about our trip to England and what the clinical sites were like.  I wanted to talk about the pubs, the food and the shopping.

Since our move, and since the crime rate was on the rise due to it being the tail end of low season, RBC had started using the gate on a regular basis. I parked it on the edge of the large planter outside the gates and waited  for Michelle to come down so the guards would give me the green light. Seated immediately to my right were two AUC students weighted down with backpacks larger than hobbits and circles under their eyes signifying late night studies (or just a night past 10PM).  I'd plopped down in the middle of a conversation about Disney movies.

"No, no. We should totally do something, like, I don't know. Like one of the classics. You know. Like,  an old movie," dirty bun, sunglasses girl said. 

"Cinderella?" Tie-dye shirt asks while popping gum. How does one pop gum AND talk at the same time? I remember Mrs. Tundidge doing this in middle school. I'd tried over the years and hadn't perfected it.

"No. I hate Drew Barrymore."

"Snow White?"

"Gawd, no! Bella Swan - hell no!"

"Wait. Toy Story - easy to watch and study."

Dirty bun and tie-dye nodded in agreement while continuing their discussion of Disney movies, white noise and pathology (or  some other -ology, they sounded alike to me). Had I really just overheard a discussion of classic Disney movies and they'd selected 'Toy Story' as the winner?  Growing up my mother had read Cinderella to me while I'd lain on top of my yellow hand-knit afghan in my floor length nightgown staring at Crayola drawings taped to the yellow wallpaper. Shit. Would these two even know what wallpaper was? That fad died a slow and painful death in the 80's.

I started chewing my bottom lip and knocking my heels on the wall of the planter to stop my overactive pity party. Oh, bollocks.  "To infinity and beyond."

Mental Checklist: where did the saying "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" originate?