On July 22, 2008, Facebook provided the conduit for a slew of birthday wishes, adorned with capitalized letters, exclamation points and all sorts of embellishments meant to convey the excitement and the “kewl”-ness of it all. Sadly it appears that, once again, I am a man apart as the dawning of those fateful numbers, 18, brings with it not the requisite sense of elation but rather a general everlasting elegy. Something irreplaceable, not just the luxury, greatly appreciated, of being charged as a minor, but rather that comfort in the vagueness and blissful uncertainty, derived from seemingly endless distance and dreams, of one’s future as an adult on this accursed third rock from the sun.
It is a familiar mental safety net for many a teenager, the never quite explicitly defined belief that after many a day, one will arrive at some magical place that requires you to give up nothing yet recieve all. The clause “When I grow up” is often used to introduce the intellectual children of this belief:
When I grow up I’ll be able to major in something I love and make a lot of money doing it too. Then I’ll find someone smart, cute and funny and then maybe we’ll have kids who barely cry and always love us. And we’ll still be young, we won’t turn into our parents. We’ll have so much fun, and we’ll be awesome parents too, never yelling at our kids just always playing with them and having fun. And death, that doesn’t really have to happen, at least not for a long long time. Whatever, fuck it, there are a lot of medical advances and stuff; aids and cancer will definitely be cured. God, life is going to be great. Sure there are some bad spots, there have to be, but everything is definitely going to work out. I’ll definitely be remembered for something great, I might even make it into the history books. I mean I don’t know exactly what I want to do or where I want to go to college or what I want to major in but that’s so far away. I can figure it out later right?
Well, it appears that despite my best efforts, later has lacerated me while my back was turned. I became a grown up in a process that did not ask my consent; no forms were signed, no pledges given to accept responsibility for my actions, think practically and make good decisions. Simply with the tearing of one more page off of my calendar and the arrival of some day that people tell me I popped out of some woman’s birth canal on, I am stripped of all that I was before July 22.
I am a grown up, I am one of what previously was the enemy. I am off to a sensible college and then probably a ripe for networking law school, all to engage in a sensible profession that will make me financially secure and a well respected productive member of society. I’ve begun to even use terms such as networking and financially secure, words that the younger me would have scoffed disgustedly at.
All I can say, in a voice trembling with the notes of incredulity inspired by newly emerging specters of adulthood, is that we were promised, in the words of Roxy Music’s Brian Ferry, More than This. Of course, I cannot tell you exactly what that is and neither could any previous iteration of me. The difference being, however, that evidence that would excoriate and expunge his foolish dreams had yet to pierce, in a frighteningly quick and precise manner, the fabric of his imaginary future.
It is my sincerest wish, one that will indubitably exist as long as there is breath in my bones, that I could somehow protect what was once me from the harsh burns of those dawning numbers. I suppose this paves the way for my first and likely most important lesson learned as an adult, wishes do not, under any circumstances, come true and as such are better to left to stupid teenagers. Consider the idiot dead and sorely missed.
Vman ( Someone who is definitely going to abuse his newly gained right to buy tobacco products in the state of Maryland )
