YOUTH
Sometimes I feel a little juvenile. I'd like to think of myself as mature, and I know for a fact that I feel superior when my classmates act like monkeys. But at this moment in time, I feel like I did when I was younger, like I didn't care if people thought I was immature because I was a kid, and everyone knows that kids are immature.
And I feel a little sick, because we're spinning like crazy and the music is light like it always is on these things, and we're all laughing. The lights are swirling and I can feel my eyes watering as I laugh and I suddenly wonder if I'm on drugs or if this is really as fun as it seems. I can feel the pull of gravity making me nauseas and the pressure of June and Ellen sitting on either side of me, telling me that this isn't a dream, either.
And soon the music has stopped, and we've slowed. We're giggly in our dizzied state as we clamber out of the teacup and off of the Merry Go Round. The world was spinning and moving like waves in the ocean, and my arms were held out on either side of me, my feet planted on the reddish orange dirt, my back hunched, but it didn't stop the ocean or the turning.
My head cleared and I finally exited the ride's perimeter and we looked at each other, laughing again.
TEEN
It starts with a montage of cinematography, speeding up and slowing down, becoming fuzzy and suddenly clear. It's confusing and always in black and white. A celluloid dream. Unlike common belief, we're not boy crazy and we're not into poop jokes or partying or drinking or doing drugs or experimenting with sex. Our hair isn't green and we don't wear black nail polish or lots of eyeliner. We don't have side kicks or beastly texting/communicating devices. We don't have the latest portable music playing device or an ultra nice car or a ultra shitty car either. Our high school's administrators as well as the normal cheerleaders and jocks are crazy spirited, but the rest of the school isn't, like a lot of high schools, and my class of '04 is always dead silent when Coach Schiller tries to get people to scream for the spirit stick at pep rallies. And we're so typically American, eating hot dogs and burgers and potato chips on the fourth of July and dressing up as stupid kid things on Halloween and eating all the candy we received that same night, our costumes still on and our foreheads glazed with sweat. Another thing that is misconceived about us: vegetables. For some reason they think that we don't like vegetables, and the real truth is, is that it's them that don't like vegetables. I know more people over forty that hate broccoli than people under twenty. And we like making good grades because it makes us feel good, and our families are normal, whatever that is, and we don't go to therapy and we don't tell everyone we're OCD or have ADD or ADHD. We're not allergic to red food dye; in fact, our favorite flavors are always the red ones. We like watermelon when it's hot outside and we're out by the pool. We don't wear sexy swim suits that barely cover us, and we don't lay out to tan, and we wear SPF 50 sun block because we know the sun is bad for your skin. We played stupid games on the playground when we were kids, like Tomb Raider or a stupid game about three girls going on an adventure on a haunted street where the street name isn't grammatically correct and that made it cool. We never wait up for the end of the world, and we don't wake up early and we don't go to bed late because sleep is for dreamers, and we know that the only truly natural things are dreams, which nature cannot touch with decay. And we know that we probably have some sort of sickness festering away somewhere; if not in us, then in our family. But not like Andrew Martin, wasting away in some hospital. I couldn't do that. Decay like that. But it's nature's will and I don't believe in nature. People think that, because we're young, we have some sort of fantastic imagination. Or some shitty, dirty, careless one. Maybe THEY do, but I couldn't tell you the minds of everyone else, only my own, and even then, that is a lie, because it's never clear for me. I know a lot of people's ideas annoyed me. They were always half hearted and disassociated and meaningless. Like a song about politics and everyone knows that shit is dead, and it died when it was born. And, at least in my small group of friends, we don't watch MTV or Fuse or MTV2 or VH1 and we can't understand why there needs to be four music channels or why there needs to be two MTV stations. Those movies are wrong. We're nothing like that. And yes, we're coming of age and growing up, but we're thinking, no matter where we are in life. We're living and dreaming and sleeping and hating and, even though we should beware of it, loving. We're loving in that teenage manner. The one that doesn't really exist but it still hurts pretty bad. And I think that, if and when we grow up, meaning, get out of what's supposed to be the best time of our lives, we'll be scared shitless about life, and love will hurt so bad that it will become unimaginable, and we'll forget about what happened to us because it will be easy to. We'll be thrown into this new place, and that's what we'll be worrying about for the next seventy or so years, if we're so unlucky to live that long. And we'll have to pay for our own house and bills and food and clothes and makeup. And once we hit twenty-one, we'll be taken seriously because we're old enough to drink so that means that we're really adults. And maybe, some of us will go downhill because they can't handle these new pressures and their master plan was ruined because of their weakness. And we'll have to start eating healthy because our metabolism will slow down, and we'll have to start working out, and that means a greater risk for injury, which means we'll have to pay our hospital bills ourselves. When we're older we'll actually have to deal with our relationships with others because they will become real and not just high school. But we all know that it's so easy not caring about one another because you just want to get out of high school and leave everyone anyway. You don't think you need them, but once you're out... you see that you're alone and they helped you get there. Your friends help you succeed at finally being alone. And you don't realize that until it happens. Maybe then you'll go to therapy because then you'll have someone to talk to other than your coworker who secretly doesn't like you because you got the job that they were hoping to get as a promotion. And when we get older, we'll think like the adults do now. We'll think that teenagers don't know how to drive and they're the ones that are driving nuts on the road. And then, at our ten year high school reunion, old friends will tell us, "You've changed," as if that's all there is to know. And we'll all have become exactly what we thought we'd become. And at that reunion, you'll learn of who's sickness finally grew enough to hurt inside them. You'll learn someone was diagnosed with diabetes or cancer or developed an eating disorder. You'll learn that someone has had five kids and the sixth one is on the way. And then, you'll see Prom King and Prom Queen. Prom Queen was the cheerleader that dated Prom King. She'll be a model now or married to Mr. Perfect with babies or both. Maybe she'll be divorced but a strong woman for girls to look up to. And Prom King will be just as you suspected: getting fat, still single with a drinking problem who likes to remember the glory days of scoring the touch down like a typical Prom King would have done. Growing up will be like swimming in lava. Growing up will be sad and happy and lonely and great and horrible and fun and chaotic. And I've accepted chaos already, but I'm not sure if it accepts me.
