Dear 17,
Hey, girl.
I know you’re super busy right now, with school and swimming and whatever it is your doing there at the dining room table – you’ve just informed your mother you don’t have room in your schedule for a birthday this week, can it happen next Tuesday? – but there’s some things you should know.
1) You’re right to be worried about Kurt Cobain.
2) You’re also right to have faith in Axl Rose. He’ll put that record out. It will require a double dog dare from Dr. Pepper and it won’t be great, but it won’t be terrible, either.
3) You will get to see Whitesnake one day. It’ll be in a tiny club and it will be amazing.
4) And Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe, too. More than once! Not in tiny clubs, but the shows will still be pretty great.
5) You’ll love other bands. That first one you will fall for inexplicably – the first time you see them, they’ll be playing Beatles-y music, wearing a lot of beige and will have four tattoos between them, which is (still) SO not your thing – but somehow, you cannot resist.
6) By the way, that photography class you sulked through last semester? That really comes in handy later. You could maybe have done another semester of that, rather than taking weightlifting.
7) You are about to have tremendous adventures. Some good, some bad, several involving trains. But twenty years down the line, the regrets you have will not be for the path that you chose.
8) This song will resonate, too:
I’m not going to tell you anything else because it will ruin the surprise(s). Enjoy your cake next week, because it’s going to be delicious.
Love,
Thirty-Seven
