Living young and wild and free?

The radio can cause epiphanies and sometimes harsh ones … for your own sake take caution when turning it on. Last week I was singing my heart out to Whiz Khalifa’s Young, Wild and Free. It was a sunny day when the melody came streaming through the speakers … so naturally I rolled down the windows and belted out the lyrics “so what we go out, we don’t care who sees, living young and wild and free.” I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the tiny face of my daughter staring back at me … smiling … I realized this song no longer applies to me and if we’re being honest hasn’t applied for quite some time.

Then I came home and saw this meme … and I’ve never read more true words:

It’s official I’m no longer that young, certainly not wild but I’m still free. I still have freedom … if you don’t count my student loan, mortgage, car payment and baby.

I wondered for a mere moment what happened to my young self … where has she gone? Would 21 year old Courtney even recognize me? Honestly she probably wouldn’t … she’d be focused on college life: tests, boys, staying up late, eating terrible food, going out a tad too much … basically being young, wild and free and not caring who sees.

The changes happened so subtly I barely noticed them. Perhaps it all started when I traded my beloved Mustang for a SUV … or maybe it was when I decided HGTV was riveting programming … or was it when I started thinking 9:30 was late? Who knows when it officially happened … but I haven’t gone down alone. All of my friends … my crazy fun friends … they also love home appliances and going to bed early.

In the tale of two Courtneys … time will keep marching on … and I will continue to get excited about robotic vacuums and humidifiers for stuffy baby noses. And you know what … I wouldn’t go back to being young, wild and free. I wouldn’t trade being “not that young”, rather tame and tied down for anything in the world.