I hung out with girls twenty years my junior last weekend.
And I survived.
As I know my limits on booze.
I know my limits on bedtimes.
I know my limits on the dance floor...wait.
I didn't know my dance limits.
And my outer thighs are still feeling it.
My mom's youngest brother is six years older than me.
We grew up together and were quite close as he lived three blocks away from my brother and I with my grandparents.
He has two daughters, with the first being born while I was still in high school.
And he and his wife lived with grandma and grandpa with their new baby girl for a while.
His second daughter (who I'll call KR) was born when I was at college.
And the family didn't live at grandma and grandpa's house anymore.
There's a big age gap with these girls and myself, but I love them bunches.
Right before my daughter was diagnosed with leukemia, KR almost lost her life in a drunk driving accident.
A drunk driver smashed into her car in the middle of the day.
A head-on collision on a two lane highway.
While she was talking to her mother, my aunt, on her cellphone.
We are thankful that she's still here.
And we all become closer as she fought to regain her life while her little cousin Zoe fought to keep hers.
KR had to take a year off from college.
To recover at home.
To learn how to walk again with rods and pins in her body.
And she switched colleges when she went back to her studies.
And that's where she met him.
Her future husband.
And that's why I was at a bachelorette party this past weekend in St. Louis.
I went with two other cousins who are my age.
My mom has four other siblings.
The cousins that I drove down to St. Louis with are my mom's other brother's daughters.
And we are 43, 44, and 45 years old.
We met my mom's younger sister, who flew in from Atlanta, at our hotel that was three blocks west of the mighty Mississippi River.
And we kept up just fine with the young girls during our weekend.
Which comes, I guess, to the point of this post.
You're never to old to have fun.
And life can throw some killer curves at you.
You never really know what's around the next corner.
So do it.
Shake your stuff on a dance floor.
Drink some drinks and show the younger crowd how it's done.
I wore heels out all weekend.
My cousin, who's my age, said she was going to wear her comfy, sensible shoes out.
"Oh no!" I said.
"These feet of mine don't get to go out too often.
So when they do venture out, the heels go on!"
Yes, I got a blister.
But I had fun.
I did some dance grinding with my younger cousins.
Is that a thing?
Dance grinding?
I did something like that.
I whooped out loud on the dance floor.
I danced low, low, low.
Maybe a little too low.
Because every time I went to sit on the toilet, whoah!
The tops of my thighs were screaming at me...
"You went too low!"
You're never to old to have fun.
To remember to dance.
Go ahead and relive your younger days.
At one point as we were dancing, I pushed through the crowd to the front of the stage (it was a dueling piano bar kind of place) urging my young cousins and their friends to join me.
It's what I would have done when I was in my twenties.
I would have been front and center.
Never dancing on the outer fringes.
Hey!
You!
Don't forget to dance.
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