Change

First in a series entitled "Life in the Middle Ages."

By Cynthia Edwards - June 6, 2002

[Published in the Dallas Morning News,
Sunday Texas Living section.]

I hate change.

Ironically, this admission, or insight, is in itself a radical change. From my earliest childhood I have embraced change, even chased it down and tackled it when it didn’t come to me of its own accord.

So how does it happen that right now, I am sitting in my home office staring at three large black-on-white boxes piled high in the hallway: another brand new computer being returned to sender, after I discovered I couldn’t live happily with new software, new capabilities, and a new look.

Me? The prototypical early adopter? The person who has made a fetish about having the latest, greatest everything in computers since the Web was young?

Wait, it gets worse. This is the fourth computer system I’ve returned since December. I could have bought a fifth one with all the shipping charges I’ve paid. Slowly, it’s beginning to dawn on me that the problem isn’t with Windows XP or the pushers, Gateway and Dell and the rest. The problem is ME. I must be afflicted with ARCD – Age-Related Change Disorder.

In layman’s terms, I’m getting set in my ways.

How did this happen? I have been the high priestess of change practically since birth. It all started in 1954 when my parents hoisted their infant daughter and toddler son onto a Pan Am airplane and moved the family from New York to the Philippines. The move must have suited me, because since then I have traveled much of the world, and lived in five countries at no fewer than 40 addresses. I know, because I counted. If the FBI ever have to do a deep background on me they’ll be busy for weeks.

When I was in high school we studied Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, which at the time numbered four: food and shelter, safety, recognition, and new experience. I was much impressed by his list but always wondered if the order was correct. I would rather skip a meal and sleep under the stars than miss a new experience.

I have been a vegetarian and a meat-eater; a tee-totaller and a drunk; a liberal, a moderate, and a right wing conservative — sometimes all at once, depending on the issues. I have officially belonged to four different religions, and unofficially embraced lots of other belief systems at one time or another.

After I started going gray I dyed my hair, variously brown, blonde, red, and, once, memorably but accidentally, green.

For pets, I’ve switched from cats to rabbits to dogs. I’ve also enjoyed the companionship of white mice and rats, hamsters and guinea pigs, caterpillars and silk worms, birds, and, during one lazy summer, snails from the garden which I housed in my lunch box. (The fact that my mother made me use the lunch box again for actual lunch the following fall is a story unto itself, and may explain much about my desire for change.)

I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin (and fat again). I’ve been an exercise freak, a team sports player, a beach bunny, and a pasty couch potato. I’ve lived high and I’ve lived low. One life condition was never enough for me. My goal, always and everywhere, was CHANGE.

And now, suddenly, I’ve had it. I don’t want anything to change again. I’ve found my comfort zone, drawn a line around it, and hunkered down happily inside. I want to keep living in this house I built, now four and a half years old, and watch the trees I planted grow tall and majestic. I want to keep using Windows 98 and never again pay upgrade charges for a new software package that just stares at me dumbly through the monitor, daring me to guess how it works. I just don’t care. I can already do everything I want to with the system I have.

If this is Age-Related Change Disorder, I think I’m going to like it. It brings with it inner peace, and a big savings on shipping costs.

But then again, before I get too comfortable, I have to face the fact that along with age comes the ultimate shift in a woman’s intimate self. So different will I be afterwards, apparently, that the process has a simple yet profound name: they call it The Change.

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