Problems

My parents are moving.

The girls and I spent the past week with them in a frenzy of packing and organizing and donating and tossing. As usually happens when some type of organizational showdown goes on, I found a few gems. One was my old collection of American Girl, a magazine geared for girls from 8 to 12.

Back in the day, I read each issue from cover to cover within a few hours of its arrival. I admired the fleece shirtjacs and velveteen overalls so prevalent throughout and earnestly studied how to throw a sleepover that had pizzazz. It all seemed so relevant.

Twenty years later, the relevancy has faded along with my desires to form a babysitting club and wear sunflowers. But I was still delighted to see the help section at the end of each issue. Oh, the problems of middle school! Just a sampling of my favorites:

I had a friend named Amber. Then I met another girl, named Megan. Amber was my best friend, but when I met Megan I liked her more. What do I do?

When I call up my friends, they are never home. They have answering machines, but I am too nervous to use them. What do I do?

There's a girl I know. I really like her, but she tries to get me to do bad things like sneak snacks and do phony phone calls. What should I do?

There's this girl in my class I really want to be friends with. I could say, "I want to be friends with you." But I don't want to do that. What should I do?

I have this group of close friends and I like them a lot. There's just one problem. They all have crushes on boys. I don't. They act like that's a bad thing.

All my friends can talk about is Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I'm sick of it. What do I do?

Problems are so relative, aren't they? I'm glad that I can leave a voice mail without freezing up, eat snacks without permission, and talk about something besides JTT with my friends (as awesome as he may be). And although my sisters and I used to spend hours calling 800 numbers with all kinds of wacky customer complaints in the hope of getting coupons, it has been a looooong time since someone tried to pull me to the dark side of doing phony phone calls.

I liked being 9, but I'm glad I'm not 9 anymore. It's nice to have hair that isn't permed, to be comfortable in my own skin, and to have the ability to be best friends with more than one person. It's nice to be surrounded by women who support, serve, and uplift each other because they have learned that it doesn't help to be consumed with their own interests. It's nice to have a ready answer when someone asks whom I have a crush on.

Twenty years from now, I hope I can look back on my problems of today and see that once again, I have made some progress. I also hope that when my girls are 9 and then 29, I'll be able to empathize with their problems and remember how it feels to be in their shoes, despite having moved on to more complicated problems myself.

Most of all, I hope I'll have gained enough perspective that my problems won't seem like problems at all.