ECS, I too loved All Creatures Great and Small. I recorded the whole series on VHS many years ago (although the tapes have probably been thrown out by now). I was just starting in the law at the time, and I really could relate to the tentative first steps in veterinary practice and figuring out how things really worked. I haven’t seen that show in ages, though; I wonder whether PBS will replay it at some point?

I remember feeling guilty about going on a single date for my 18th birthday. I had to convince myself that I really was old enough to go out with a boy alone. The idea of dating in order to find an actual boyfriend or husband (eek) was a huge adjustment for me. I am extremely grateful that those years are over.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think teenage girls are any less clueless. (And, in the spirit of Ziff and Mark’s emendations, I can personally testify to the ongoing cluelessness of those in their twenties and thirties. It’s always a strange thing to realize how clueless I’m going to look to my later self, but not yet knowing the exact nature of my own cluelessness, how little there is I can do about it.)

Mark–yep, that was me, sad to say. I’ve had exactly the same thoughts about my embarrassing dating history. Will there be scenes of reconciliation and forgiveness–or is it better that we just avoid one another for all eternity? Eeek.

Another Anon, I’m really sorry this essay made you feel “defective and messed up.” Is it any comfort if I tell you that I’ve deleted all of the really defective and messed up parts of my own history from it in an attempt to make this a light-hearted, self-mocking post?

Jessawhy, thanks for your comments. I can’t say I ever flirted with my boy cousins (all of our cousins lived far away, and we generally saw them only every few years), but I do remember that I was not good at flirting. There is basically nothing at all that I miss about dating. It was a horror.

Jessawhy and ECS, I remember watching Star Trek and Deep Space Nine, but I missed Dr. Who. Maybe one of these days Lynnette can induct me into the ways of Peter Davison. (Or perhaps at some future Bloggersnacker…).

I was certainly clueless when I was young and dumb. While I am no longer young, I’m not sure I am any less dumb.

Mark, this is perfect! I want it written on my gravestone. It stands to reason that if whole societies can decide later that what their predecessors did was hopelessly unenlightened (dumb) that we can each personally also understand our own dumbness best with the perspective that a little time offers. Therefore, I expect to fully comprehend the extent of my mortal dumbness about ten years after my death.