eLeCTRIC PENCILS

I’m texting with my cousin, who is my age, about getting my apartment and I say that it’s the first time I’ve lived alone since 2004.

She replies with “I’ve never lived alone.” She had her first kid at 17, and she’s either lived with her parents, boyfriend/husband and/or kids.

That struck me as kind of odd, but then I started doing the math for people in my family, in my generation, and the total number of us who have ever lived completely by themselves is…

Me.

Everyone else has either had a kid, boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse or parent living with them. For their entire lives. And it’s not like I’m talking about a bunch of twenty-somethings. My cousin and I are the youngest of our generation and we’re 37. (Well, she’ll be 37 in 11 days.)

That strikes me as a really odd fact about our family.