This year, I celebrated my 25^th birthday. I can almost hear what’s running through your head when you take in that statement—she’s a member of a lazy, coddled generation, glued to her cell phone and computer, updating her MySpace page five times a day instead of working at an actual job. Believe me, I’ve heard a number of your kind tell me so. And while some of that is true—I’m writing this essay on my laptop at a local café—the rest gives me a headache on a daily basis.

My parents—my mother especially—raised me to think for myself. After all, they were the same way. They graduated from high school in 1967, at the beginning of the Summer of Love. They weren’t hippies or protesters; they went to school and worked hard to make the world and their families better in their own way. My mother has spent the majority of the last 30 years as a resource specialist, a teacher who helps special needs and second-language students.

It was their mindset that prompted me to get started on my own story early. I worked semi-professional jobs as early as high school, when I was a gopher for a local architectural firm. That phase passed pretty quickly, and I ended up writing and interning for magazines while I was out of college for the summer. While my peers were happy partying every weekend, it was my responsibility to earn my own spending money, so I worked hard for it—and was loath to spend it.

While I now support myself, I did live with my parents for a few years after I graduated from college, but I did it to build up my own savings and start planning for retirement before I truly set out into the real world. And now, I have an IRA, and I just bought my first new car. When I went to Rome for the first time, it was on my own dime. Not only that, but I’ve won several awards and honors in my chosen profession, and I’ve written articles on topics that will be hard to top as I grow older—and as I’m told, wiser.

I’ve never been one who enjoys having someone tell them who or what they’re supposed to be. In college, a roommate of mine was so sure that I was going to be so enthralled with my first midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show that he predicted I would soon be dressing up as Magenta and streaking my way across the stage. I never did. What he said made me that much more determined not to like it.

Perhaps it’s the same way with societal expectations, and once I enter an age where I am supposed to be responsible, that’s when I’ll go against the norm. It worries me that there’s such a dim view of the generation that’s supposed to be spending its time sowing wild oats and generally being stupid, when we’re the ones who are going to inherit all the problems the U.S. and the world is experiencing now. People may not think we’re ready to make a difference yet, but maybe that’s another expectation I’ll have to shatter.

For now, if you see a woman in her 20s waiting to cross the street, listening to her iPod, realize that she may not have been formed from a cookie-cutter. She might wear at least semi-fashionable clothing, but she also reads several newspapers a day (even if they’re online). She might like going to museums as much as she goes to concerts, and the first dial on her car radio might be NPR—but just before the indie rock station, of course.

***

It’s evident, of course, from the mention of my 25^th birthday and MySpace as the website du jour that I wrote this several years ago. What may also be obvious from the first line is that I initially wrote this piece as a potential entry in This I Believe, the now-defunct project from NPR that detailed various contributors’ religious and spiritual beliefs…in all of the forms those could take. Of course, I never actually sent it in.

But honestly, that’s OK. Because taking up this cause of defying ageism against the young is something I’ve done in writing since I was about 13. I sent letters to the editors of Time and the San Jose Mercury News, protesting unfair coverage of teenagers in the media. The latter actually awarded me a Silver Pen Award for my words on the matter when I was 16. I’ve just always been so irritated about being lumped in with the bad stereotypes of my generation that I’ve had to express it multiple times.

Is this piece the best example of that writing? Maybe not, but it’s definitely the most recent…and the most coherent! I could find some angrier examples, but it’s best to let those languish in obscurity.

When it comes to the hordes who pack up their cars and move to Los Angeles, I like to think that I don’t fit the cliché. A year ago, I decided to make a change and move out of the San Francisco Bay Area—and my parents’ comfortable suburban home. L.A. offered the same good food, the weather, the politics that I couldn’t stand to leave. Best of all, I didn’t have to change my license plates.

Really, it was just an exercise in laziness.

I carried the typical NorCal resident’s cynicism for anything Hollywood, and I came here with no desire to see my name in lights. I don’t have a screenplay to sell. Getting into the hottest club isn’t my ultimate goal in life. Somehow, I thought this would be evident soon enough; that I’d get a steady job and join the throngs of regular people sitting on the freeway on our ways to work. I’d put the same amount of thought into a place to live—after all, I’m the type who drives my car down Rodeo Drive even though it rattles and is missing a side mirror. Something nice and comfortable, no matter the ZIP code, would suit me just fine.

My home base at first was a friend’s couch in Mid-City; from there, the Palms looked like the best option, though my roommate and I didn’t restrict ourselves too much. I spent my weekdays temping and looking for work, and on the weekends, the two of us drove around with a map and a notepad, charting addresses and bedrooms and dollar amounts.

We started with Craig’s List and Westside Rentals—the old stalwarts—but after we found that many of the best-looking places weren’t listed anywhere online, we just started calling numbers on For Rent signs while idling at the curb. Thanks to that strategy, we found a gorgeous, refurbished duplex in Silver Lake going for half the price it could reasonably get. (Seriously, it had central air and a washer/dryer included!)

After two days of gloating over our good luck, we returned with our applications, only to find that our potential landlord had already promised the place to some neighbors, who caught the same sign on his garage door while walking down the street. In the crush of our disappointment, we figured that this was surely the first time that anything in L.A. had ever been accomplished by walking.

Losing that place was when it started to hit me—I actually wanted some of that L.A. glitz and glamour I had been so sure I didn’t need. It didn’t matter to me that Silver Lake was reportedly a hotbed for hipsters. I wanted the gorgeous apartment with the view of downtown. I wanted the leafy, charming neighborhood and a home with character. L.A. is renowned for being a place where almost everyone driving the streets isn’t quite pretty enough, quite charming enough, quite whatever enough.

I still didn’t want the acting career, the film credit, the nod from the bouncer. All I wanted was for L.A. to deem me important enough to get that apartment.

We continued our search deflated and half-hearted, knowing that nothing we could find and afford would live up, but also needing to find a place before we became permanent refugees. From the far outskirts of Santa Monica to Valley Village to Echo Park, we toured apartments in our price range and plunked down the money to apply to several perfectly acceptable places, which were beyond sterile and boring in comparison. Our passion for the search had slipped away along with that fabulous apartment.

But then came a moment we couldn’t even have scripted—that same potential landlord called us back. His next-door neighbor had just gotten notice from his tenants and would have a duplex with the same number of bedrooms (and the same price) available in a month. By this point, we had credit checks and deposits pending for other places, and an even more anxious deadline looming—I had to be off my friend’s couch in two days, because she was moving as well. So, my roommate and I rushed over, breathless, trying to temper our excitement for fear of offending the karma gods once again, but failing miserably.

And this place turned out to be better than the first. Old Spanish architecture, beautiful antique furniture included, an expansive back deck, sizable bedrooms. Having learned our lesson the first time, we submitted our applications that day, before anyone else even knew the place existed—and not knowing exactly how we would bridge a month-long housing gap.

On a deceptively clear morning in late May, I woke up and realized that for the first time in my life, I didn’t know where I was going to sleep that night. We had approval for one of the sterile, boring apartments and could have moved in that day if we wanted, but our names were still in the hopper for the Silver Lake place, even though its availability was a month away. Just the credit and reference checks—and a small shred of hope—remained. While we waited, I called around to executive and long-term apartment complexes, saying my “significant other” and I might need a place to stay for one month, starting that night. Many laughed at my request, but wished me good luck. I finally secured a space for us at the cheapest place I could find—an ExtendedStayAmerica in an industrial section of Gardena. The placement of our accommodations on a map was a bit frightening to this SoCal newbie, but we didn’t have much of a choice.

That afternoon, while I helped my friend load up her moving van, I got the call—my roommate and I had the Silver Lake place. If we wanted it. There was absolutely no question that we did, but in our elation, we realized that our next challenge we would be getting over our fear of L.A. geography. We called and canceled the sterile, boring apartment with glee—but when we opened the door to our one-bed hotel room and saw how much room that one bed actually took up, we started counting down the days for the next month.

That time was spent cooking pasta in a kitchenette the size of a closet, grabbing clothes out of drawers while trying not to surf off an inflatable mattress and chatting up college basketball with the security guard in the lobby. We received a full education on the virtues of the 405 vs. the 110 and battled the supposedly complimentary wifi a nightly basis. Yeah, the parking lot was a bit scary at night, but even over the course of a month, we managed to make ourselves a home there.

Yet when we finally received the keys to our beautiful apartment, the first thing I did was sink to the floor and hug the carpet. My roommate followed, and we just laid there, awestruck. After everything that had happened, in L.A. terms, I had finally made it.

***

Speaking of articles I wrote on spec, this is something I put together for the Sunday magazine of the Los Angeles Times. I actually met the magazine’s editor at an event in which personal essays were the main topic and sent it in to him soon after, and he declined. The first-person piece is a form that I was still trying to get the hang of—and I’m still not sure I have it down—so it wasn’t a surprise. But like the trip to Rome and Cairo that was mentioned last week, this was a situation that had to be immortalized in writing somehow. And both events took place in 2005, which was quite a banner year.

Of course, I have to acknowledge the fact that there are three of us in the above photo and only two roommates mentioned in the course of the story (hence the sic in the subhead). Truth is, the actual situation was a bit more complicated than this story lets on—my friend (on the left) and I (in the middle) did move down to L.A. from the Bay Area, and we were the ones going around on apartment searches. But we ended up with a third roommate—my friend with whom I originally stayed when I first arrived in Southern California—and the situation only arose because the great place we found happened to have three bedrooms.

See how complicated this is? And why it made more sense to streamline the narrative?

Still, all the nuances of the story needed acknowledgment…especially because there’s a good chance my roommates could read this. (xoxo, ladies!)

When my friend and I announced our plans to take a two-week trip to Rome and Cairo, the concerned voices of friends and family across the country all chimed in with opinions.

“You’re two young women traveling by yourselves. Two young American women,” they would say. “How on earth will you be safe over there?”

We weren’t worried. The friends we would be staying with in both locales were young American women themselves, each of whom had been studying in their respective cities for at least nine months. They knew how to conduct themselves; we figured we’d just follow their cues.

“But the Italian men will prey on you, and the Egyptians will just hate you,” the voices continued to say. We were instructed to learn the phrase “No, I will not marry you, and please take your hands off my behind” in Italian, and “I am a Canadian” in Arabic.

In the end, the reverse seemed to be true. Identifying our national origins in Cairo proved not to be a problem, but it was when our gender encountered the odd balance of power between the sexes in Egypt’s Muslim society that things took a wrong turn.

After weeks of careful planning, our plane happened to drop us off in Rome two days before the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Millions of pilgrims from all over Europe and the rest of the world were flooding into the city at the same time. On the train from the airport into the city, other passengers assumed that we were there for the same purpose and chatted us up on recent events.

We had to tell them that not only were we there simply to sightsee, but that we weren’t even Catholic. On the day of the funeral, we made an effort to walk in the opposite direction of St. Peter’s Basilica.

The young Italian men of the city, whose loudly amorous attentions we were thoroughly warned about, seemed to be in mourning for their Padre Santo and kept their observations on our physiques to themselves. Only on our last day there did one slip, telling my friend he wished to be the cone of gelato she held in her hands. Like our hostess had demonstrated, we simply walked on without giving the admirer any acknowledgement.

But to our surprise, sentiments like these permeated the dusty air of Cairo for the entire week we were there. Even with the anti-American attitudes of the Middle East, we felt free to tell those who asked where we were from. One merchant in the Khan al-Khalili, a popular bazaar that had been targeted by a bomber the week before our arrival, even apologized for the actions of another Muslim who shares his first name—Osama.

Our gender proved to be much more of a sticking point. In Cairo, women freely walk the streets, though many don’t do it alone. And while Western wear is popular, most of a woman’s body, including the head, is covered. Only the occasional Egyptian woman wore a full burqa, where only her eyes were visible.

As our hostess there had instructed, we only brought conservative clothing. Our sleeves were always at least three-quarter length, and nothing was too tight. As the weather got warmer, our resolve slipped—but with borrowed shawls, we still passed the conservative dress test as we walked around town.

It was easy to resent fellow tourists who disembarked from air-conditioned tour buses in shorts and t-shirts.

But even with the utmost attention paid to proper Cairo etiquette for women, we still felt the weight of our gender pressing down on us. Our guidebooks told us that thanks to the importing of Western movies and television shows, Muslim men often expect Western women to be loose with their morals. And our interactions indicated as much.

Everywhere we went, there was the sense that someone was watching you. Even Muslim women with head coverings passing by gave us once-overs. Cabbies and vendors tried to get our attention by calling out names that sexual harassment manuals have made scarce in this country. And while visiting an American-style nightclub with our hostess and some of her friends, the stares of the waiters made the prospect of dancing to the familiar American music daunting.

On a day trip to Alexandria, our anxiety reached a fever pitch. The cool glances we attracted in Cairo became downright hostile there—men shouted at us and tried to get our attention as we walked down the street. Children came up to us to say hello and ran away giggling, as though they’d just completed a dare.

The most disturbing incident happened while navigating a taxi ride, which was always an interesting Egyptian experience. When I attempted to hand a cabbie five pounds for a five-minute ride—already more than was customary—he grabbed my arm to demand more money. I shook him free and we walked off, but the cabbie did a U-turn in the middle of the road. I whispered to my friend under my breath: “He’s coming after us!” The folks in that district of Alexandria had little sympathy for us, just watching us power by.

The city did have its moments, including the Egyptian ex-pat who was back in town to visit his parents and told us about his time living in the United States. We talked with him while taking refuge in a tea room, and he sympathized with us for the difficulties we’d encountered that day.

But by that point, we were ready to cut our day short and hop on a train back to Cairo. If we could have, we would have hopped a plane back to the U.S. that very day.

All we wanted was for the staring and catcalls to stop. The nagging questions of our relatives were whispers by comparison.

***

This is a piece I wrote on spec for the Los Angeles Times in 2005, the same year that my friend Meredith and I took this trip. There was a possibility of getting this in the Travel section, though I soon learned that going to Italy and Egypt is so common that it really doesn’t catch the attention of any editors who cover that beat. That’s fine, because we had a great and—as you can see—educational time.

Oddly enough, this may have been the only piece I wrote about that trip. Which is odd, because it was epic.

And yes, I took the pictures. Along with a ton more, which you can see on my Flickr page.