Today, I am a woman. What I mean, of course, is that last night I single-handedly chaperoned twenty screaming eleven-year-olds to their teacher's wedding in Jerusalem. Yes, you may have my autograph.

We arrive at the mini-bus to find a group of anxious, cheeping girls who breathe loud sighs of relief upon glimpsing my adult presence, telling me that the driver "looks scary". As I alight, I am handed: two cameras, a cellphone, a card for the teacher's gift plus a pen, an envelope filled with the money for the scary-looking driver, a package of tissues and one of those rolls of gum that looks like tape.

"Can you hold this, Mrs. Pomerantz?"
"Can you hold this, Mrs. Pomerantz?"
"Mrs. Pomerantz, can you hold this, please?"
"Do you have a cold?" I ask Little Miss Entire Packet of Tissues.
"No," she says breezily.

It is a half-hour drive to Jerusalem. A very long and loud and lusty half-hour drive, and the scary-looking driver, initially quite cantankerous, turns out to be a raging speed demon as well. I say Tefillas Haderech (Prayer for the Traveler) with heartfelt concentration. The girls, unused to being out and about town at 9:30 PM, and excited at the thought of seeing their beloved teacher wed, are literally bouncing out of their seats.

Do you remember being eleven? I don't, but I imagine it's something very similar to what I am experiencing.

The "talk", which is another way of saying, "the excessive pitch and volume of twenty hyper voices" turns, of course, to weddings.

"I always joke with my mother about why she never invited me to her wedding!" giggles one girl. When eleven year olds congregate, I notice, they like to giggle.

"Ugh, you should see pictures of my mother's wedding! My aunt was wearing, like, a GREEN shirt! Everything was so old-fashioned!"

"I know. And those HAIRSTYLES! They're so funny!"

I gulp. These girls--y'know, the ones with the mothers with the old-fashioned hairstyles? Their old-fashioned mothers got married the same year I did. It's what? Twelve years ago? And we've already become the object of ridicule.

"Tell them not to leave me any garbage on the floor!" the driver exhorts, keeping a careful thirty kilometers above the speed limit.

I barely hear him. My mind is on another time and place, twelve years ago, when my husband and I swore that WE would always be cool, never old-fashioned. OUR kids would never look back at us and laugh. NEVER! No ridiculous bumps, leisure suits, or frilly-dillies. WE would be the coolest parents to ever hit Planet Earth.

Uh, I think we should start setting smaller goals.

Now they're eleven. They think they're on top of the world. One day I hope they'll have the privilege of overhearing twenty eleven-year-olds burst their bubble. It's a rite of passage.