The Wild Goose

The words poured out of her as we were sipping our craft beers and snacking on items from the local taco truck nearby. I felt as though her words echoed even louder throughout the spaces in-between the young people playing corn hole in the Downtown LA brewery than the conversations that were taking place all around us.

I cringed as my sister retold stories about past events when I was young and mildly irresponsible. I buried my face full of embarrassment into the branded glass of, surprisingly tasty, avocado beer and interjected when I could.

“We’re not like this anymore though. I swear!”

It was true. All my friends and I who went ice blocking down golf course hills, who threw a New Years party that people still talk about seven years on, and who have made my high school, college, and post-grad experiences amazing and unforgettable had toned down their behavior a bit. They were doctors, lawyers, teachers, who were married with kids, buying homes, and settling down into the more mature adult world, and we weren’t anything like those stories that were being told at the bar anymore, for the most part.

The group who was listening to the series of stories laughed and shared their own experiences as they sipped their beer. One friend mentioned that they envied our adventures. However, all I could hear over indie music and muffled noises behind the bar was descriptions of cascading chaos involving my younger self. I leaned over to my sister later that night to half-jokingly say that our friends may not invite me to any of their events now.

I was reminded of an adventurous past again as a friend shared a website about primal zodiac signs. I discovered that my sign was the Goose, which was a combination of my western astrological sun sign, Libra, and my eastern sign, the Horse. The description that caught my attention for the Geese of the primal zodiac was the fact that those born under the sign have both an adventurous side and a more domesticated side blended into one. As these Geese mature that “still dream of romance and adventure, but they find peace and contentment while still enjoying life.” Ultimately, they settle down.

“It seems true from the stories we heard about you last night,” the friend said.

A slight panic set in as I thought back to trips abroad, amazing jobs and internships, and all the people who I have met in the strangest and the most exciting of ways. Would my adventures eventually stop? Granted astrology is not an actual science I still felt that the mystic explanation of my character seemed to align.

It is also commonplace to see a general trend of individuals aging out of the crazy series of events that they continuously subject themselves to and mature into adults with less of a wild side and more common sense. I feared that I was reaching that age of adulthood where you couldn’t just brush off mistakes in life as just being young. If I hadn’t been keeping track of my age, I would have mistaken my late twenties for a mid-life crisis in that moment of reading the cosmic breakdown of the Goose. I suppose I must find a balance like the scales in my western astrological sign and hope that my wild Goose side doesn’t die.