My tiny little town has finally bestirred itself, after being buried under some of the wickedest winter weather we've seen since, dear heavens, last winter. Crossbreed yuppie/hippie moms are taking their adorable and color-coordinated children out to skid through the slush and trek down to the bakery for no-longer-home-made doughnuts and one of their delightful wraps. Touristes, here for god only knows what reason (is there some function I missed?) pack into the Lost Dog, trying to ignore the lyrics of the underground rapper in the background and the fact that Garth, coffee-guru and owner of the Dog, is briskly going mad as they utter the overly-ornate names of super-sugared beverages. The be-ringed and be-studded year-round patrons huddle around the warmth of a cigarette outside; they're most often students who eventually either move on or else lose their student status and settle into town for good, displacing some previous local with a similar history. Shepherdstown has an orbit, much like the sun: after a while, everyone cycles out, but they always cycle back in again some time or another. I wish I could impart that little nugget of wisdom to these kids who look me askance as I make my rare brief forays onto what they consider their turf...I long to stare them down, announcing by staying power alone that I sat and smoked on these benches, and the benches before them, long long before these kids were out of their Spiderman pajamas. I long to tell them just in how much disdain the genuine townies hold them, that the seniority they feel they've achieved through 3 years at school is as but a minute in the eye of a 17 year local and veteran Lost Dogger. That I remember when the Dog was a miserable hole in the wall, crammed to capacity with teetering bags of coffee and a hodge-podge of teapots for sale. That I remember back to before the Lost Dog, when it hadn't even been conceived yet, and the Pharmacy next door was still a pharmacy, and not a restaurant, and not a real estate office.

I've finally become acquainted with the uncomfortable prick of growing old, of having to acknowledge that everything is transitive and mutable, that pre-dating my own boastful knowledge of the town is someone who was here before me and looked at me the way I look at these kids, with disgust and disdain and a secret jealousy that the next generation has stepped up to fill the blank spots, that for them this world has just opened up and become for them the pinnacle of the here-and-now, before they discover how this place is just as fake and hollow as every other place, the people just as two-faced, the epiphanies (drug-induced and otherwise) are just re-run realizations that have already been made recorded and forgotten. I miss that place, I miss that step up, that opening of the doors, the shining of the new sun of rebellion and exhileration on my face.

But I wouldn't go back there for the world.