I’ve turned into my parents

 

It was bad enough to realize that Ada asking me for first-person advice on what she should wear to an 80’s dance was the same as when I asked my parents what I should wear to a 50’s and 60’s dance in middle school—

Oh no. I’m just now doing the math and realizing that it’s not the same. The 50’s and 60’s were only about thirty years past when I went to that dance, and the 80’s are now forty years ago.

As I said, that was bad enough. Then came Ada’s complaint about the vegetable peeler.

Yes, I had noticed that the vegetable peeler no longer, you know, peels vegetables. It actually still does ok on carrots, but it’s worn into the exact curvature of an apple so it doesn’t in fact peel them, it just conforms to them.  

It’s not a fruit peeler, ok?! Ada asks so much.

She pointed out how old it is while I melodramatically ordered a new one from Amazon (they come in colors now!).

As I debated excruciatingly whether to get it in sapphire or mint or teal, I thought of how we mercilessly teased my own mom throughout our childhood about her vegetable scrub brush, which, slight exaggeration aside, had about 2 skinny bristles left by the time I came into consciousness. Whether true or not, we always said she wouldn’t get rid of it because it was a wedding present, which would’ve made it about a million years old in kid years. 

The vegetable brush became legendary.

As I tried to push back on Ada’s profligate suggestion that we could buy a new vegetable peeler, I cast my mind back to when I got it…and realized…I think…I got it around the time of my marriage. 

Twenty years ago.