every year on super bowl sunday there is a thought that occurs at least once, "i want to write a song about super bowl sunday". i never watch the super bowl. this idea comes to me every year as i spend an afternoon in a nearly uninhabited city, while everyone else watches their televisions. it is a particular space that i really enjoy. something beautiful about an empty city; like walking through an abandoned worlds fair. i am reminded as i happily move through this stillness that i have never felt like i was built like most folks. from the get-go my wiring dictated that i spend my time away from, rather than amongst, the herd. talking with belle over breakfast, there was a late teen/early twenties kid at the next table, alone on a series of different but uninterrupted phone calls. talked with the phone almost a foot away from his face. always curious to me. he was talking about betting on the super bowl. couldnt help but hear. now let me first say that there were a few things he said that betrayed he was a decent kid. but the substance of his conversations could at best be called inane. i began to think about my inane youth and about my nephew. hes four months old. how will he deal with the unforgiving gauntlet of youth. come his teens will he feel awkward and out of place as i did. if not, good for him of course. but i did think that it seems like my strategy might not have been such a bad one. you are suddenly hit with a tsunami of hormones while simultaneously realizing your parents and any authority figures in your life are full of shit; but you havent yet got the life experience to fully fill out your own world view. why not just lay low for a bit while the dust settles. learn a thing or two about the world on the down low then emerge an interesting young adult. if you are a young person, or feel love for a young person, who doesnt seem to have the herd instinct that most folk have, i hope to buoy you up a bit. i know that one of the most unbearable aspects of my youth was that people constantly told me that i was in the prime of my life. youth is everything. if youth was everything then i had nothing and there was nothing but worse coming? the most important thing that my mother ever told me was that her life didnt get good until her twenties. that was the only time i had ever heard someone say anything like that. i couldnt agree more. contemporary america doesnt really value aging but i do. for all of youths vigor there is also ignorance and self absorption. as a wise man once said," you dont often get anything in life. you only trade one thing for another." i for one am happy to trade in what i had for what i am getting from aging. so there. another super bowl sunday and i didnt write the song but at least this year i wrote something.