Boxing Day 2006: Back By Popular Demand

Back by popular demand, my Boxing Day deep thoughts have again graced your inbox. I can see you now – weeding through the feebly personalized holiday emails you were lucky enough to receive from Pottery Barn and Ticketmaster, you found this: a holiday tradition like Butterscotch Schnapps and Hot Cocoa. As I mentioned last year, Boxing Day is the oft-forgotten day of celebration and glee, and in this spirit, I am including you in my gleeful celebration. Enjoy! (Or just hit delete, I won’t know the difference.)

Last year I tackled the issue of time and how, no matter how hard we attempt to prioritize, we’re just never going to have enough of it. How time is the most amazing gift we can ever give because it is the only gift that you can never get more of. This year's topic is just as cliché.

Recently feeling nostalgic, I took an all-too-stressful stroll through Bellevue Square; a now highly avoided task that constituted a pretty hot date in middle school. Passing unfamiliar storefronts in halls I used to have blindly memorized, the memories came flooding back – like exactly how much Sweet Factory candy I could get for $2 dollars of saved lunch money. I grudgingly trekked past The Boat, which seems to shrink each year, and somewhere between Brookstone and Victoria’s Secret, it started. I began wondering why kids these days had their backpacks to their knees and were wearing their painted-on high-water jeans so tightly that circulation must be a concern. I caught myself scoffing at the abundance of perfectly slicked hair and how kids these days were too immersed in their cell phone conversations and iPod playlists to notice anything outside of their own world. I glanced into Mariposa, a formal dress favorite of mine in the days of yore, and questioned exactly how kids these days expected their bodies to be covered by such little fabric. And then the quintessence of all things that I am not was thrust at me in such harsh reality that I felt like I had fallen off the trendy tree and hit every dated, archaic, obsolete branch on the way down. I walked into Abercrombie & Fitch. I was suddenly surrounded by perky orange salespeople who were flawlessly groomed and plucked – all of whom I instantly recognized to be wearing far too much eye make-up and bronzer, yet I was the one who looked like I was beaten by the unfashionable stick.

We’re old. Ok, I’m being a bit dramatic. We are not nearing our death or sad demise, but we are no longer the target audience. We could no longer be on The Real World. 80% of TV commercials are targeted at kids these days that are 3, 5, 7 years younger than we. Those Hot Older College Guys in Farris Bueler and Adventures in Babysitting now look like the annoying potheads who lived down the hall in our dorms. We can no longer work all of the latest gadgets, nor do we care; we’ll get our little brothers to set them up. Personally, my cell phone is far smarter than I am, and I'm moving on.

And it was then, in my moment of pop-culture pessimism, that I saw my handsome law student boyfriend on a bench ahead waiting for me – dressed in a classic black pea coat, not tinkering with an iPod, or rapid-fire texting someone on some ridiculously thin cell phone, and I realized that we are all in a very good place. We have survived years of impressing our parents and our classmates and we are finally able to put all of our practice to work – to live the lives that we want to lead – not because it’s cool or trendy, but because it is what we like. It’s what feels good. Now we can pick and choose what pop culture we accept and reject: yes to MySpace, no to Ugg boots. Yes to Kelly Clarkson, no to Razor Phones. You do you. 

I am so thankful to have friends like each one of you. Spending time in Kansas (yes, Kansas), I find myself thinking of you all often – he’s doing this, she’s doing that, and I am in constant awe at what remarkable positions my friends have found themselves in. In light of the many world tragedies, I reflect on the incredible people I've been blessed to know and love. Just like Time Magazine, YOU are the cliché topic of this Boxing Day email. And now you're done reading my antics until next year... unless I lose my cell phone again.

Wishing you and yours a fantastic 2007.