Thursday, March 18, 2010

Age and Maturity or Lack Thereof

Today is Thursday and it's a very special Thursday because...
  1. I got a temporary job as a teaching assistant for Japanese exchange students. They get in on Sunday and then I get to spend the entire week trying to cram English into their brains and then they go home. Needless to say, I am excited! (Also, who can beat $11/an hour? Buh-bye McDonald's recruiters.)
  2. Yesterday was my sister's 1/2 birthday. She is now 13 and a half. Also it was St. Patrick's Day. I love it when holidays involve banishing snakes from Ireland. And drinking, not that I do much of the second. Or the first. *pathetic laugh* (This is my reaction, not any weird cue for you, the reader)
  3. I've come to realize that in less than two months I could be on the road driving. This is provided that I pass the 25 question knowledge test in the week following my sixteenth birthday (w00t!) but I've been studying since my oldest sister was sixteen (in other words, for four years) so I'm hoping this dedication will pay off.
Also, about this driving thing, while I am excited to get on the road and have a license, it's seems kind of soon to be behind the wheel. Driving is one of those things that is constantly in the back of your mind as a kid. I remember thinking about how exciting it would be when I turned sixteen and learned to drive. It's a rite of passage, right? And yet, when I envisioned myself in possession of my own car, it was a glamorous image of a red convertible which I'd walk to with perfect hair and click the lock and get in and ride into the sunset. My point is that I was so old in that picture.

I don't feel that old right now. That girl in my nine-year-old mind pulling out of the driveway in that shiny red car is not me. I feel astonishingly young. How did this happen? Sixteen used to be a symbol of independence and maturity. Why do I feel like it's just another birthday in which I'll still feel the exact same as I felt when I was fifteen which is the exact same as I felt when I was fourteen?

Maybe if I get a haircut I'll look more sixteenish. But then again, my hair is already long and 'sixteen hair' feels like it would be long and very straight. I need to move on from this. I can't age myself. I can, however, go shopping for clothes. A new 'sixteen' look. *sigh* I am vain and materialistic. Maybe I can cure myself of this by reading Lord of the Flies.

Does anyone else feel my pain?

1 comment:

Renata said...

Aging is weird. On the one hand, it's like, "Getting older, yayz. Independence and hot cars and money woot." and on the other, it's one step closer to becoming old and uninteresting and dead. Or coming to realize you don't change much at all year to year.

I read LotF when I was 12. Might have scarred some mental tissue. There's a movie. And a lot of religious allusion. Have fun.