Dear Kids

Last night a couple of freaks from the internet picked me up in an uber and drove me to a mansion in Quebec where there was a birthday bash underway for one of the aforementioned freaks.

The hosts and guests seemed a little out of my league, cool-factor-wise, so when a slim vapor was passed to me I did something I almost never do in a group of strangers and took a timid little suck.

"No, no, no. You have to suck hard. Take another try."

I sucked hard.

"Wow. You're trusting. You didn't even ask what you were vaping."

I stared the strangers down while I held my breath in.

"It could be strong stuff."

I slowly exhaled.

Within seconds I was having an awesome back and forth with one of the strangers in the room about working in the government that, during the course of the back and forth, decided me on shelving the work I've done to date on my second book (which is not much) and writing instead about my many temp assignments in the government.

If it's half as hilarious as our conversation it will be a runaway bestseller.

Shortly after that I had an awesome one way with another stranger in the room re my former life as an internet superstar - as noted in my bio, I am the famous Sooey of Sooey Says - that morphed into an awesome back and forth about EVERYTHING.

Then, as if my life could get any cooler, one of the aforementioned freaks from the internet (and uber) started passing out pieces of birthday cake!

Oh, and while all this was happening, a couple sat down at the piano to play and sing jazzy tunes, the perfect backdrop to a party that already brought to my mind one of those scenes from a Woody Allen movie where you're just like, "Oh fuck off with your groovy New York social lives".

Anyway, I turned sixty about three weeks ago and I've been thinking a lot about when I first started having fun and why I would go on to be so conflicted about it.

And really, it was because I was a while to the party and once there I wanted it to go on forever.

But last night, the two freaks from the internet said, pretty much at the same time, "Time to go."

Which was when I realized, "Hey yeah, it's time to go."

And when they dropped me off, I went straight to bed where Bern McGern was already sleeping in the spot where My Blond Companion would normally be and resumed reading "Golden Age" by Jane Smiley. It's the third book in a trilogy and if you've never read her don't go to the library and start now because I don't want to be told a book of hers is out. Wait until I've read everything she's ever written. Don't worry. I'll let you know in this space when you can go to the library and take out a book by Jane Smiley.

Anyway, I always tell my kids, "Have fun!" And then I add, jokingly, "But not too much fun!"

Well the joke's on me because instead of "But not too much fun!" I should have been advising "Just make sure to get played out of the party by a jazzy duo!"

Cripes, I had to wait until I was sixty to find out how fun it is to leave a party in progress, jazzy duo and all, and get home in time to read Jane Smiley in bed.