Age meme from GD

How this works: You comment here, I give you an age (please tell me how old you currently are, to minimize the chances that answering will require time travel), and you fill out the meme questions as they applied to you then and apply to you now.


I lived in:

At 18: I started the year living with my grandparents in California, then moved to the dorms at Clark (in Worcester, MA) and then in the summer lived in a sublet room near campus. I fucking hated dorm living, especially having to share a kitchen with twenty-odd other people and bathroom with about half that. So even though the house I moved into was ancient, and had questionable plumbing, and there was no garbage disposal, and I had to lug my laundry three blocks to a laundromat, it was still a big improvement.

Now: The bottom unit of a nice duplex in Seattle. We've had a few issues with it, but the landlord (a friend of my stepdad's who lives in the upstairs unit) has been pretty good about handling them quickly. And we have an awesome washer and dryer that were brand new when we moved in, a water heater to ourselves, and basically my ideal kitchen. I'm pretty happy with it. And I adore this city.

I drove:

At 18: Nothing, and boy was I mad about it. That summer was when I arranged to buy a motorcycle off a friend of my mom's--it was a great bike, a Honda CBR 600 with like three thousand miles on it, and I was incredibly psyched. I'd taken all the training for it, I'd talked it all through with the seller, and I'd invested (considerable, for me) resources in getting down to San Jose to look at the bike, having it checked out by someone who knew what warning signs to look for, and calling in a favor from a friend with a motorcycle trailer to get it up to Sonoma for me. Then, weeks after the conversation where the seller explicitly said she was sure enough about this that it would be okay for me to transport it as soon as I had the means, and a few days before I was planning to actually go get it, she backed out on me. I think she got cold feet because that bike was a psychological representation of the freedom she'd had before she started having kids, and she didn't want to let that go. In retrospect, I should have just done it; the guy who'd been holding it for her for five years wanted it out of his garage, and I had a written record of her saying yes, if the bike passed muster when I went to look at it in person, I could take it with me. Sigh.

Now: A white 2001 Kia Rio with a failing transmission that's going to give up the ghost on us any day now, at which point it's back to busing, walking, and bumming rides until we can afford another car.

I was in a relationship with:

At 18: projectyl, whom I'd met through the National Puzzlers' League and tried with increasing stubbornness and decreasing efficacy not to fall for over the course of six months.

Now: Same dude. This surprises no one more than me.

I feared:

At 18: Absolutely jack shit.

Now: Failing at adulthood and having to rely on others. These are the same thing in my head. (Yeah, I know.)

I worked at:

At 18: Pier 1 Imports. I didn't mind that job while I had it, but dear god do I never want it back.

Now: Science. Ish. More childcare at the moment.

I wanted to be:

At 18: A neuropsych researcher using primarily fMRI techniques to study social judgment and preference behavior.

Now: Same. Aside from the terminology, my answer to that question has been the same since I was 13. This is why it's so damn frustrating that I can't get into grad school. I know exactly what I want to be doing and I can't do it.