Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Lancaster, Jen (read more books .txt) 📖

a piece of my tender thirteen-year-old heart every time he smashed the mirror with his guitar neck in utter frustration. No, Rick, no! I’d shout. Not Jessie’s Girl! You don’t want Jessie’s Girl! You wish that you had Jen-ni-fer! You want Jen-ni-fer! As I’m only thirteen, I don’t have a real concept of what statutory rape entails, but that’s not the point; I should be your girl. You should spray-paint MY name on that brick wall. My parents won’t mind.

The pinnacle of my young life was when my friend’s dad drove a carload of freshmen girls up to South Bend to see Rick perform at our first concert ever. [My friend Poppy’s first concert was the Rolling Stones and Blackbird’s was Led Zeppelin. Yet when I told them mine, they were jealous.] Of course the minute I discovered a recording artist who was sure to return my love [George Michael, of course.] I was totes over Rick, but for a brief moment in time he was my pink heart, yellow moon, orange star, and green clover. To this day, every time I see a bull terrier wearing a short-sleeve dress shirt and a skinny tie, my heart beats a tiny bit faster.

“I can’t believe it! He was fine last week—I mean, I just saw an interview with him about Late, Late at Night. [Kudos for whomever titled his memoir.] What happened?”

Fletch’s lips get all white and puckered. “Your singing killed him.”

Nice. I swat at him with a saucy spatula but he manages to dodge me. “If you’re going to come in here and be all critical while I’m slaving over this gorgeous Bolognese sauce, you can have Lucky Charms for dinner.”

“Jen, I could hear you over the sound of my power tools. In the basement. At first I thought the ungodly screeching was one of the cats caught in the drill press, but then when I really listened, I realized they wouldn’t howl to the tune of ‘Jessie’s Girl.’”

After an (insincere) apology and a promise to tackle the dishes, I grudgingly allow Fletch to have my Bolognese for dinner and it is spectacular. The trick is adding a quarter pound of diced mortadella (with the inset pistachios if you can find ’em) and slow heat for maximum flavor concentration. And don’t even get me started on the importance of using San Marzano tomatoes!

While we’re eating, I reflect on my first concert experience. Now that I’m an adult, I have a whole new appreciation for how much bourbon it must have taken Mr. Moon, my girlfriend’s poor father, to wash the sound of a station wagon full of shrieking freshmen (and the stench of Aqua Net and Love’s Baby Soft) out of his head. Yet here I am thirty years later and the night’s as vivid in my memory now as it was then and so I’m thankful he afforded us the experience.

“Hey,” I say, the kernel of an idea forming, “we should take Joanna’s daughter to her first concert. How fun would that be?”

Fletch deliberately sets down his fork. “By ‘we’ you mean you and Joanna, right?”

“Um, yeah. Considering the last concert you saw was Ministry, I’m thinking Taylor Swift isn’t quite your jam.”

“Then I wholeheartedly approve.”

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand stated that there’s no such thing as real altruism. She espoused the principle of ethical egotism, meaning that a person’s moral obligation is to promote their own welfare.

Translation?

I still have the musical sensibilities of a teenage girl and I kind of want to see a shitty pop concert in the guise of doing something nice for my pal’s kid, so I need to find a way to make it happen.

Not long ago I asked for some upbeat, treadmill-worthy iTunes suggestions and I ended up downloading the super-sugar-pop playlist of your typical eighth grader, full of glitter and Katy Perry and Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. Despite an almost pathological desire to douse that kid with a can of mousse, I’ve played “Baby” more times than I care to mention. So the idea of taking Joanna’s daughter to see him wasn’t without appeal. More importantly, I could write off the cost of my tickets in the name of research—win, win!

Joanna threw a wrench in the works, however. “Anna doesn’t like Justin Bieber. She says he’s for younger girls.”

Fine.

I have the musical taste of a tween.

We can still work around this.

Joanna buys four tickets for the Chicago leg of the Glee tour and her daughter Anna loses her freaking mind when she finds out we’re going. (Joanna doesn’t let her watch the whole show, but she gets to see the musical numbers and I guess that’s enough.)

I make sure Anna’s aware that it’s me who masterminded this whole idea because, for some odd reason, it’s important for this kid to like me. I’ve never been one to win a child’s favor before, but this is Joanna’s daughter we’re talking about and I want to be her Auntie Jen, largely because she’s a fine young lady and her parents have done an amazing job of raising her. In fact, at her last birthday party, she asked for donations to the local animal shelter in lieu of presents. How cool is that?

Anna’s favored me more since she came swimming here last fall and I made some decent headway with a marshmallow-scented Philosophy gift set and the Monster High book, but I’ve ground to cover still.

You see, our last big outing together was kind of a misstep. During Christmas break in 2009, Joanna and I had the bright idea to take Anna to the museum and then to high tea because Joanna’s mom and her friend did this when she was Anna’s age and she has such fond memories of that day.

However, our edited-for-tween-listening college stories did nothing for her, [Even at ten and a half, she didn’t buy that we were reading the Bible with all those Sigma Nus.] nor did the Matisse exhibit.

I’m not sure how to say this next part because