My Parents' Weird Friends

I remember as a kid when my sister and I would attend conferences or other large gatherings with our parents, and they’d run into long-time friends - people with whom they’d gone to school or were from their original hometowns.

There was always that “OMG! They’ve grown so fast!” exchange.  Without fail, we’d hear those people’s recollection of a time when my sister and I had been ‘yea high’ (insert hand close to the ground gesture). Or, depending on the depth of their relationship with my parents, some memory of a diaper change they’d performed or something ‘cute’ we’d said or done during some previous encounter.  

Of course as far as we were concerned, we hadn’t sprung up over night’. Heck, those birthdays seemed to take a mighty long time to come around (not that it did me much good anyway since with a birthday only a week past Christmas, my gifts were most often merged #stillNotAmused).

I can’t speak to my sister’s feelings, but during those exchanges, I’d do a mental eye roll LOL.  A polite pursed lipped smile would be plastered on my face as I waited for the ritual’s end.  I often had no real knowledge of who the doter was; or my recollection of ‘that time when’ was, at best, vague.

Fast forward thirty years and I’m my parents’ weird friend.  

There truly is nothing new under the sun and I’ve come to believe that the “I remember when” exclamation over your friends’ children is a rite of passage.  It’s intrinsic and no one can stop themselves from doing it LOL, no one!

They DO grow up so fast!  

Never mind that this era allows me to actually follow their growths on social media; yet the transition from diaper to tassel still seems supersonic.

This graduation season, as I’ve seen my friends’ posts of their kids, I’ve found myself having to give a mental rebuke ‘Don’t be that person’ just before the OMGs spill from my lips (well technically my fingers) as I comment on their posts.

Sometimes I think that perhaps it’s because I have no children of my own that the passage of time doesn’t seem very dramatic unless I see the kids (that is until my knees creak and hurt every time I move from a stooping to a standing position or it takes me that much longer to run those three miles or I find a grey hair in my hairline AND my eyebrow or I see SMS language that I don’t understand… OK so maybe the passage has been more dramatic than I’m willing to acknowledge).  Should I even mention how in a recent conversation with a friend we got to a point of asking each other about the statuses of certain pains? #gasp

SIDEBAR: what’s XD?

I almost feel a modicum of guilt when I try to imagine my friends’ kids’ responses to my outpouring.  But then why should they be spared the awkward moments?  They’re lucky it’s cyber gushing and I’m not in the room so they can then freely roll their eyes at their parents (well, me) if my gushing messages are passed on.