I do believe that ages 12 until 30 are the most write-able years of one’s life. Coming-of-age adventures never get old for readers.

Exhibit A for my little theory is How Did You Get This Number?, a collection of essays by Sloane Crosley.

Crosley is a child of the New York suburbs; also a child of the sexual revolution, living out the long adolescence so common to that generation. She shares tales of the mean girl of her middle school, including a whatever-happened-to-Zooey coda. She shares the exhilaration of her move to New York City from, well, White Plains, where they can actually see the Empire State Building. But still. The museums. The subway. The teeny-tiny apartments.

And what young adult doesn’t pass through the living-with-roommates stage? One of Crosley’s settles in and soon the author wonders where her necklaces and sweaters have gone. Did she misplace them? Or is somebody a kleptomaniac?

Then there are the travels. Crosley is the adventurous soul who will spin a globe, then buy a ticket to wherever her pointer finger lands. Which turns out to be Portugal. Mind you, Crosley can’t tell left from right, north from south, and addresses in Portugal are more like story problems: Go up the hilly street and around the second bend, and after you pass the olive tree. . . Furthermore, doesn’t every twenty-something dream of visiting Paris? Oh, Crosley makes memories there, and soon the French make it clear she should never come back.

Then there are the friends’ weddings and maybe even true love for Crosley.

With her clever turns of phrase, she amused and amazed me. Well, occasionally, all that wordplay left me behind. But I caught up again and got to see Portugal without getting lost in its tangled streets.