My First Star Trek Convention, Turning 50, and a Trip to Chicago
Hello, me
Standing in an endless security line at the airport, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turning, I discovered a woman about my age standing closer to me than social convention normally dictates. My eyebrows shot up and she whispered, “Your sweater is caught in the waistband of your skirt.”
I felt behind me and not only was the fringe of the long sweater caught in the waistband, it had carried the bottom of the skirt with it. I had just walked what felt like miles through the airport with my butt proudly jouncing in the open air for all the world to see.
I yanked it all down, tried to laugh, and thanked her. “We gotta stick together,” she said with a kind and understanding smile.
My face was red. I was mortified. I wanted to cry. So much for a confident start to a new era and my very first solo vacation.
A few weeks before this humiliating event, I looked at a calendar and finally acknowledged that there was no putting off turning 50 years old in a month. I’ve never been that hung up on my age, but it’s a milestone and I felt like I hadn’t done enough with my life. It was time to do something big. Relatively speaking. I was on a budget.
