Betty

The first album I ever bought was Fearless by Taylor Swift.

I was 13 years old with no money of my own, which meant that I needed to convince my parents that this would be a worthy investment on their part. My plan was to play enough Taylor Swift songs in their general vicinity until one day, they would wake up and realize they needed this album as much as I did. Some may call this brainwashing, but I call it generosity of spirit. Why buy an album for myself when I could be buying it for the entire family? One for the price of the three! Who could say no to that?

They caved. And at last, Fearless was mine.

Do you have songs you listen to when you want to be taken back to specific moments in time? I have a whole Spotify playlist dedicated to these songs. Some songs I avoid, either because their association to the memory is too fragile, or because the memory itself is too delicate. These songs are the equivalent of the good china, treasured but never used. Fearless is the exact opposite of that, it's the old bowl you eat your morning cereal out of, the one you've had forever. Its link to the past is so firm that you could eat soup out of it and it would still be your old plastic bowl from a time when Cinnamon Toast Crunch was the pinnacle of gourmet cuisine. Fearless is that to me.

It was the year 2009, I was in grade 7. It was the era of pizza days, puberty (and health class, gross!) and popular kids. Yes, those kids, the ones who would keep 3D movie glasses, pop out the lens and wear them, non-ironically, as "nerd glasses". Can you hear me rolling my eyes? Meanwhile, I was in scrabble club and spent my lunch hours reading books in the library with my real glasses. Now, is it so hard to believe that 13 year old me would find Taylor Swift belting out You Belong with Me to her crush with the mean girlfriend just... mildly relatable?

(For the record, and I want this on record, I still know every. single. word. to that song. Actually, to every song of that album, in case we're keeping score. )

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Now flash forward to this morning. I was driving alone on the highway and the song Betty comes on. It's one of her newer songs from her recent albums. In case you haven't heard it, here's the first verse:

Betty, I won't make assumptions

About why you switched your homeroom

But, I think it's 'cause of me

Betty, one time I was riding on my skateboard

When I passed your house

It's like I couldn't breathe

It's from the point of view of a boy who cheats on a girl, and the song is about him trying to win her back. It's acoustic, just the guitar and a harmonica in the background, it's very old-Taylor. And the lyrics, the LYRICS, it sounds like it came straight from the mouth of a 17 year old boy. A stupid boy. A stupidly endearing one.

While this is a song about cheating, it fills me with warmth. Here is this boy, pouring his heart out to this girl, and it's honest, and hopeful, and vulnerable in the way that only a teenage boy can pull off.

I'm only 17, I don't know anything. But I know I miss you.

Do you get it now? Why this song hit me right in the middle of the chest?

I have a vivid memory of being in my high school science class and watching magnesium burn. It must have lasted no more than 3 seconds, but I was mesmerized. Blindingly white, it blazed then flickered and was gone. This is exactly how it feels to be 17; haven't we all known this at some point in our lives?

Here you have this boy, who feels every emotion as if it were his first, who is foolish and scared and trying desperately to fix his mistakes, stopping at nothing short of maybe even holding a boombox outside her bedroom window. You can't help but smile.

I realized then, as I was driving, the charm of youth in all its imperfection. Mistakes are endearing when you are 17 and dive headfirst with no afterthought.

I switch into the next highway lane with ease, my left hand turning the blinkers on then off without hesitation. Here I was, driving along the highway as if it was the easiest thing in the world. It hit me then that I no longer had anything new to fear. I had very few mistakes left to make, at least none that would ever be considered endearing. The mistakes I could make were only adult ones, cold and factual and final.

This reminded me of a movie I watched last year called Boyhood. It's an interesting movie concept actually. They filmed over the course of a decade with the same cast, and it's about the life of a boy who grows up, nothing more, it's as mundane as real life, but just as complex. My favourite scene is when the boy leaves for university, and his mom has this realization that there were no more milestones that her life had to offer. We live through everyday with this feeling that somehow there is always more, that there must be something brand new tomorrow or the week after that. But what happens when we reach a stage in our life where there truly is nothing more? What do we do then?

Write about it?

I'm being flippant, of course life is not over at 24. But it sure feels like it is a finite concept, ending before the body does. I have spent the last month in geriatrics, spending time in nursing homes and in rehab units watching people recover from strokes. A diabetic patient of mine asked what the point was of me telling him to not eat ice cream and hot chocolate and coca-cola if we all died anyways.

Kids and old people, they always keep it real.

I don't know the answer to that. How terrifying it is, that one day I will have experienced everything new there is to experience, and then, my life will revolve around making sure I don't have a stroke or lose a leg to diabetes. How meaningless it must feel to live a life where you are just actively trying to delay what must come tomorrow.

Despite my pessimism, I do have another theory. That only young people fear the problems of the old, at least to this extent. Once you have decades more under your belt, maybe it's comforting to have routine, to know exactly what it feels like when the sun rises through your window at 6AM (and be awake for it!), to have those you know you love nearby, and maybe even to know that tomorrow will be the same as today. The appeal of certainty is not lost on me.

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I love debating with my dad. There are many things we don't agree on; it's more fun that way. Most of the debates end once both of us have given up on persuading each other and my dad gives me his version of a concession, which is that my opinions are right for someone who is in their 20s and his opinions make sense for someone who is in their 50s. Basically a civilized way to say, let's agree to disagree.

Maybe, through all of this writing, this is the same conclusion I've come to.

I crave the right things that I should crave at 24, and I fear the exact things I should fear at this age. And that's fine by me.