Oh summer. A time for freedom. And this one more than any others: I just graduated high school! I’m becoming an adult, you understand, and I have to enjoy the remaining time I have as a kid. Or else.
Or else is right. Parents and the media have forever told me that I need to enjoy myself while I’m young. And now here I am, caught between youth and adulthood; not quite one and not quite the other. I can’t play in the sprinkler anymore, but neither can I wear a suit and use the word “fiscal”.
There’s an odd feeling rushing through every part of my consciousness. It’s a feeling like having a rug pulled from under me. I feel like the part in Forest Gump where he runs so fast the braces on his legs fly off in slow motion. Things I used to know about myself are fading away.
I will never get a job, declared the younger, more idealistic me. But here I am, sloshing from one place to the other, practically begging to find any sort of employment. “Yes we’re hiring...just not you.”
I promised I’d never wear trendy clothes. And I still don’t. I have mostly the same clothes I did in the twentieth century. Remember that? Remember the twentieth century, with its baggy jeans and clunky basketball shoes? Before polos and tight jeans made the man?
But even in this area of my life I’ve been making subtle changes. I recently bought a t-shirt from a brand name high-minded fashion store. I haven’t worn it, but boy do I ever own it!
I promised myself I’d never stress out the way I saw people do. But here I am, a stressed out eighteen year old – with no actual responsibilities, mind you, just a high level of stress. True story: my sister recently cleaned my room for me. I was out of town, and the walls were being painted. I came back into town, found my room clean, and promptly flipped out. Whew, calm down, breathe, it’s just a clean room.
I told myself I’d be a kid as long as I could. But now I feel the kid in me slowly fading away, leaving a hairy, older me that my younger self wouldn’t recognize.
But when I stop and think about it, I mean really think about it, I know that everything is okay. Because I have the summer to sit down whenever I feel like it and write my rambling feelings of something as mundane as growing up.
When I stop and smell the roses, I honestly do appreciate what little time I have left as a kid. And I’d better enjoy it. Or else.