Oooh... scarey

I cannot believe it. I was sitting at my desk today, and one of my co-workers from the Financial Aid department stopped by my desk. She had this neat little magazine all about federal and state financial aid, and how much your child qualified for based on your income, and how you and your child can increase the amount of aid (both in grants and loans) that you can receive. I thought it was a pretty slick little publication, and was idly leafing through it -- yes, it gets that boring at my job when classes aren't in session -- when it suddenly hit me like a brick right between the eyes.
I am in my mid thirties, and I have a child who will be going to college in two years. No, LESS than two years. I honestly thought my chest was gonna cave in.
Y'see, she's my daughter from my first marriage. I was married very young and VERY disasterously to a lady with some major personal problems (alcohol and fidelity would top the list) for a roller-coaster ride that lasted less than two years. When we split, she went into rehab within eight months, and I got custody. (Not just of her, but also of her sister, my stepdaughter, who is in college right now and making us incredibly proud. But that's another post.) I was already dating my current wife (no wait, that doesn't sound right. My forevereternalforgiving wife, that's better), and as luck would have it, we were already seriously with child. I remember those days very clearly: lots of emotional turmoil, lots of not knowing how we'd ever make it through alive, and not a lot of clearheaded planning for the future. But then, we had The Boy, and things looked up. We got married, we moved back to my childhood home (and still live here!), I got a really great job with the phone company, and everything started gushing out some serious blue sky and roses.
Of course, time seemed to take longer back then, if that makes any sense, and after things had gone well for what seemed then like a long time (and in hindsight seems like five minutes) , we decided to have ANOTHER baby. The only one we planned, god bless us. We were starry eyed, we had big dreams for our children and for the future--
And it all came crashing down faster than you can say young and stupid. My wife had an unbelievably difficult pregnancy, culminating in a mini stroke and confinement to her bed for the final two months. The phone company traded our whole division to Bell Atlantic for some of their wireless territory, and EVERYONE got fired, right down to my boss who'd been with the company for 26 years. My car caught fire -- an engine fire -- and halfway exploded before I could properly pull over. The baby was born with complications, and she's had problems ever since. We spent five minutes consoling each other about five weeks after she was born, and four weeks after that we found out we were pregnant again. I mean, the skies practically clouded over and rained shit for a solid year straight.
We pulled out of it eventually, of course. I got another job, my wife got better, and there were years and years between our middlest daughter and the next one.  (Okay, four and a half years, but it seemed longer to us.) Things got better, and worse again, and better... we lived and we learned.
But things speeded up somehow. Time got shorter. The kids grew an inch every time we turned our heads for a minute. Right now, inside my head, I'm only twenty six, maybe twenty seven tops, because there hasn't been time for the outside to soak through my thick skull to the inside. I think things are still the way they were... until I get one of those sudden flashes like I did today, which is kinda like an icepick in the kidney just when you least expect it. How can my little girl, the one I had on my own (for that ten minutes between practice wife and real wife, natch), how can my sweet little princess be a JUNIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL, for God's sake?
I tell you, it's all just some dirty trick. I don't remember who said it (I'm famous for forgetting the little things like that), but it's still true: youth is wasted on the young.