A letter to my younger self, regarding the town of Berkeley.
posted June 9th, 2010 by EverywhereistDear Teenaged Everywhereist,
Hi. How’s it going? I’d like to take a few minutes to talk to you about your future. Sadly, I won’t have time to get to the whole “hair issue” you have going on, but needless to say, you really need to stop bleaching it. At home. Apparently while blind-folded.
Here’s the thing: every February, your high school debate team travels to Berkeley for a tournament. I realize that this is a big deal: trips are prohibitively expensive, so your high school travel will consist of those yearly trips to San Francisco, along with summer debate camp in Iowa City and a few ill-fated weeks in Spain during the summer before your junior year.
No, I won’t tell you why the Spain trip was ill-fated.
Anyway, you will find Berkeley to be a magical place. It will seem big and bright and full of interesting people and shops and foods. There will be a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop! People will be selling things on the street. Homeless men will sing to you! (They don’t usually sing in Seattle so much as mumble and occasionally scream obscenities). For years, you will be convinced that San Francisco is the best town in the world.
Burn those jeans immediately.
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And that’s fine. That’s all well and good. In fact, you should think and feel that way. You should be excited and thrilled and look forward to that tournament all year, even if it’s only a few short days spent in a city two states away. There’s nothing wrong with thinking that Berkeley is a magical place.
Nor is there anything wrong with feeding bread to vermin, you miserable little fool.
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I just want to warn you: it won’t always twinkle like it does now. It will never again be as exciting as it is when you are 15, or 16, or 17. In fact, years from now, you will finally return to Berkeley, and you’ll wonder what the hell you were so excited about.
Despite now knowing EXACTLY who Rasputin is (instead of pretending), this place won't hold much interest for you.
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And you will no longer consider this intersection to be "bustling."
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You will, however, still find stuff like this amusing.
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It just won’t be that great. It will barely be interesting. But fortunately, you’ll have a friend in tow who is great. And interesting. She will take a long BART ride out to Berkeley because you have the crazy idea that you want to go there, and she’ll listen to you blather on about whatever nonsense you have to talk about. Here she is:
What? No. NO. You two aren't dating. No. That sort of thing only happens during college.
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I’m telling you this because I know there will be times in college, during the gray Seattle winters, that you’ll wish you could have afforded to go to school at Berkeley. And it will bother you a bit. But it shouldn’t.
Because things turn out better than you could have imagined. Life will happen in Seattle.
Graduation. College. Hangovers. All-nighters (academic). All-nighters (recreational). Studio apartments. Finals. Waking up and forgetting where you left you car. Waking up and forgetting where you left your pants. Concerts. Parties. Funerals. 21st birthdays. First dates. Second dates. Are-we-still-counting-the-number-of dates. Moving. Moving in together. Another graduation. First post-college job. Plane trips. Road trips. Tripping of another unspecified nature. Countless failed attempts at cooking. Moving again. Proposal. Wedding. More trips. More weddings. Blogging. The occasional fight. Wedded bliss. More blogging. More trips.
Most of it will be amazing. And it will put everything in perspective. Everything. The heartaches. The headaches. Even the time that boy who told you he broke up with you because of your sarcasm, immaturity, and fickleness – that, too, will make sense.
Because years later you will remember he said that, and you will realize, with unwavering conviction, that those are, in fact, your best qualities.
And you will meet someone who also realizes this. And you will travel together. Everywhere. Wineries outside of towns you have yet to fall in love with. Winding streets in Venice. One-way streets in Milan (down which you are headed the wrong way). Boat tours in Stockholm. Dinners and subsequent food poisoning at the Sydney Opera House. Glacier hiking in Iceland. Oslo. London. Glasgow. Madrid. Munich. New York. Montreal. Miami. Los Angeles. And yes, even back to San Francisco.
And the only casualty of all of this will be Berkeley. Because after you’ve seen all these other places, it just won’t be that magical anymore. But the rest of the world? It will sparkle.
Enjoy the ride, kid.
Sincerely,
The Everywhereist
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P.S. – Stop bleaching your hair. Seriously.
P.P.S. – Yes, this means you do get over what’s-his-face.
P.P.P.S. – If you can, invent Facebook.
Tags: Random Musings, San Francisco
June 9th, 2010 at 10:10 am
I spent a summer in Berkeley when I was 19. It was my first summer away from any sort of adult supervision. I lived in a dorm and allegedly attended classes and had 50 bucks a week to spend on whatever I wanted (mostly comic books and pizza — just like now) and hung out with a lot of older students who enjoyed getting me drunk. I was pretty sure I was never going to leave. My plan was to get a job at Blondie’s pizza and just be a cool dude, or something. But in a moment of paternal intervention that I credit with basically saving my life, my dad came and got me and dragged me back home. I still remember it fondly, though I never fed vermin and did run into a much younger Whoopi Goldberg one morning on the street.
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June 9th, 2010 at 10:26 am
I love this post – I think it is my favorite one so far.
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June 9th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Darling, you’re leaving me speechless and still pondering. What would I tell my younger self? Maybe, stick your neck out and do something cool on your own because you can, no matter what they lead you to believe? And if I could, would I be different in a good way today? Who the heck knows? Sure is compelling to think about.
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June 9th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Great post, Geraldine! I have to say, though, I had the opposite experience. The first time I saw Berkeley, like six or seven years ago, all I saw was Telegraph St and I never wanted to come back ever. The people terrified me, (and I lived in NY at the time), everything was dirty and run down and blech. Then my brother moved to Berkeley Heights shortly after I moved here, and when I went to visit him, I fell in love with Berkeley. Shattuck Avenue, the Rose Garden, the Cheese Board, tiny winding climbing streets cluttered and covered with foliage I had never seen before, friendly people, intellectual discussions all around me, and the coolest jewelry ever. And the food! So…I love Berkeley. But I stay away from Telegraph.
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June 10th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Great post, Geraldine! I’ve often thought about what I would tell my younger self if I could deliver such a letter, but it always got so long and rambling…yeah, there are a lot of things I might do differently, but only if I could still wind up where I am now, because I’m really happy with my life at this moment… so after a few attempts I abandoned all the sage advice and just decided that if I could, I would just tell my younger self to buy stock in Apple. A LOT of it.
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June 28th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Funny you say this: I’ve lived in San Francisco for three years now and have been to Berkeley all of once…to grab lunch en route to Tahoe! Though my sister-in-law and her husband are moving there this week, so I was planning on expanding my Bay Area horizons and visiting there more often…or not.
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