Dear Ramona Quimby,

I signed a twelve-month lease on my apartment today; by far the most grown-up thing I have ever, ever done. It made me think of you because, well, we sort of grew up together and I haven't heard from you in a while and I was wondering what you're up to these days. If you've joined the Grown Up Revolution or not. I imagine that you'd be with me... one of the reluctant ones.

I mean it's been since like, before middle school, dude, so I don't even know what you did for college. I thought about looking you up on facebook, but I'm not a big fan of "the poke" and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't remember me by name/profile picture only and I definitely don't want to make my profile public so, you know... whatever.

Anyway, signing the lease made me kind of sad and miss the days of waking up whenever I felt like it every day of June, July and most of August, recess, actually using my library card and not just reading summaries and interpretations on Wikipedia. I've done all that I can to maintain my carefree 8-year-old existance, making minor allowances for things like a piece-of-crap car, a couple "jobs" that allow me to feel "creative," and not wearing my shirts tied in a knot that rests above the left side pocket of my jeans. Gotta keep the line short of offspring and a 9-5 to maintain what's left of my integrity. Not that I don't want to have kids, because I do... desperately... so much so that it's almost embarrassing. It's just that I'd rather rewind to 17 and do that for the next ten years and then repopulate the earth. (No offense, of course, if you're a wife or a mother or a career woman or corporate or anything like that.) I just really miss corn dogs and flavor-ice popsicle afternoons and asking permission to leave the house.

I miss you, too. Look me up on facebook if you're not too grown up for one.

Your friend,
Kayla