let's stumble towards success and pack some snacks for little breaks

When I first moved to Kansas City right after my thirteenth birthday, my family started going to some homeschool gatherings. At one of them, I hit it off with a girl around my age named Grace, and invited her to my house for a sleepover. She told me at some point during that night that her older sister Ida had this uncanny knack for predicting fashion trends. If Ida wore something, she told me, everyone would be wearing it two years later.

I was excited about this. Had she done tests? How many times had it happened?

Grace didn't really know.

But if she hadn't tested it, how could she be sure?

Grace kind of shrugged. She was sure because right now everyone was wearing the jeans Ida had been wearing a couple of years ago.

No no no, I explained, that's not how being sure works. You have to write down what she's wearing now, then compare it to fashion trends in two years, and then you can really know for sure. But only if you track someone else who isn't a trendsetter and compare them. Here, look, let me graph a projection of the results if you're right. No, look.

...this, in retrospect, may be one reason I've always had difficulty finding people my own age with whom I could really connect.

Now there are 70-something Carolyn Pajors in my brain, laughing at me, eating money and swelling to vast sizes.

Oh, thank god for Gerard Butler and the hobbits. *breathes a sigh of relief*

And no, you don't want to know.