I'm a Toys "R" Us kid

Maturation has a funny way of springing up on you, reminding you that your adolescence, your innocence, is over. As I sit here, slowly sipping on my roommate's coffee and looking out the window onto the tundra that is upstate New York in the winter, I can't help but wish that I could be in some other point in my life. I am stuck in what people refer to as "the best years of your life" and all I can think is that I'm tired of being too old to be considered a child but not quite old enough to be considered an adult. Don't get me wrong, I love that I can eat basically what ever I want and not have to worry about things like mortgages and car payments, but I need to know into which category I fall: man or boy. I'm tired of trying to figure out consequential issues like what I want to do with my life and at the same time enjoying a good fart joke. I always thought that there was a turning point, some catalyst where the beaming glow of childhood met the stingy gloom of adulthood and all of a sudden, things would be completely different. I want to hit that point, yet "Dude, Where's My Car?" remains to be one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.

Perhaps it is a commentary on the turn that maturation has taken with my generation. What if being mature has begun to mean keeping a portion of the "inner child" alive and well, and not just letting it slip out with every mid-life crisis? What if my generation fully appreciates embracing the twelve year-old in all of us? Not sunning immature behavior, but viewing it as a healthy release from the everyday mature life. I can't help but view myself as an adult with an overly active "inner child" and, as I watch my friends and colleagues and how they interact with each other, think and hope that they feel the same. I've seen the same people who make silly in a mirror for fun console a friend in times of tragedy and I've seen people write heart-wrenchingly beautiful songs for their acquaintances with whom they shared their childhood.

All I can hope for is that my adolescence, my innocence is not over. Not over, but sharing its mind with a levelheaded adult. I pine for the day that not only do the important adults in my life see me as an accomplished adult, but also I can view myself as someone young at heart. I don't want to be one of those adults whom people cannot imagine having a childhood. I want my adolescence to be a significant part of my personality forever and always. I just hope that this "in-between" stage that I seem to be stuck in can last a little while longer, at least until I'm old enough to buy a beer. 

-Written 2/13/08