I'm a little slow.

After reading the below post, I got to thinking: It's now become blatantly obvious to me that I'm more than a little slow about most wordly things!

I didn't know how to put a tampon in until I went to college in 1983, when a friend had to coach me through the process (she on one side of the bathroom door and me on the other).

I didn't know how to do laundry until I went to college in '83. (Thanks again to a roommate for showing me how---after I'd borrowed a white shirt from her and washed it in a load with reds and blacks and ruined it.)

I didn't know how to order from or tip at a restaurant until I went to college in '83. (My parents didn't go out much.)

I didn't have sex until I was 23. (My first lover, a woman and an awful person, is still the only lover I've ever lived with.)

I didn't get my Bachelor's degree until I was 28. (Though I did hurry up and get my Master's a mere 3 years later.)

I didn't get my first computer until 2000 (which my mom bought for me), when I was 35. (In my defense, I HAVE been working since I was 16---just at low-paying jobs! All of my friends had computers by the mid-'90s, but I never could afford one.)

I didn't have a pedicure until I moved to New York City in 2007, when I was 42.

I didn't buy my own car until 2016, when I was 51 (!). From age 16 until I moved to NYC in 2007, I'd always driven free used hand-me-downs from my parents: Pinto (from my father), and then a Dodge and Mazda from my mother, and then the used Ford Contour that my mom paid for (and that I was supposed to make payments on but did not after the first few months---sorry Mom). My first car purchase with my own money was my used Mazda 2 in 2016 (still driving it). Still have never bought a NEW car!

And now... I never paid to have my apartment cleaned until 2022, when I was 57!

What the hell is next? Falling in love with an actually deeply MORAL person who's also kinda cool on the surface? Getting married? Backpacking across Europe? (Or, at this stage, RV-ing across the United States?) Finding out that Earth was a destination hundreds of thousands of years ago for higher-intelligence refugees from a tapped-out Mars? Kind of a joke, but...we're not satisfied---we're obviously disconnected from some tap root...