30 Going On 13

Last weekend, I was watching the enchanting Jennifer Garner flick 13 Going On 30 (it was part of a movie marathon that included two other favorites guaranteed to drive any man away, In Her Shoes and Something's Gotta Give), and thinking I really ought to star in the sequel, 30 Going On 13.

When I was 13, I was a very powerful eighth-grader at Crosby Middle School. I was the number-one flute player in the school (duh), and my band teacher and I even had a special whistle. (Mr. Dennis Anderson was possibly the best teacher of my entire public school career and beyond, and I sincerely wish I'd called him up and told him that before it was too late.) My on-again, off-again love interest was a bad boy named Brandon with a floppy blond bowl-cut, and I never found his antics anything but 100% amusing. Most of our romance played out in the back of Jefferson County Schools bus #411, but he was an excellent folder of notes and he did jump off my parents' balcony to impress me once.

Anywho, if I could lend my 30-year-old brain to my 13-year-old self for a week or so, there are a few things I could easily accomplish:

1. Since my most cherished activity of all time is staring out the window, I would stage a walkout at Crosby Middle School, a stinking brown blob of a building designed in the '70s when the presence of windows was considered a menacing distraction for students. Little did those idiot architects know how many perfectly coherent sentences I would dream up while staring out of windows later in life.

2. I would provide myself with many deadly comebacks and various other knee-as-weapon moves to use on the vast array of young men who found it endlessly entertaining to suggest I was on the fast track to a successful career at Hooter's.

3. I would strongly advise myself against being dragged to Christian rock concerts and stadium revivals by various friends' mothers, who clearly thought I needed Saving. I mean, how close did I come to being brainwashed?! Well, not very.

4. I would throw away any jars of Noxema facial cleansing mousse that may have been lying around our house at the time. Noxema is the most drying chemical agent on earth.

P.S. I am SO MEAN to telemarketers who mispronounce my name. It really gets me going.

Telemarketer: (Long crackling pause): "Hello, is this Mrs. A-muh-lee Drew-key?"
Me: "No."
Telemarketer: "With whom am I speaking?"
Me: "Amalie Drury."
Telemarketer: "Well, Mrs. Drew-key,"
Me: "I'm sorry, but do you see a "k" anywhere in the spelling of my name?"
Telemarketer: "I see D-R-U-R-..."
Me: "So why do you keep saying it with a K? And what makes you think I'm married?"
Telemarketer: "I'm sorry, Mrs. Dur, I mean Drew..."
Me: "I think you've got the wrong person, and furthermore, I don't have enough cell phone minutes to indulge this conversation. Adios."