Time
Well, my birthday is approaching and, fittingly, i found this on my computer:
excerpted from LIES, DECIT, AND FAMILY VALUES : A Collection of Essays About Life in Small Town America
Hi, I'm Stephen Murphy. I'm 17. I have no rights, except the right to live. Although even that can be taken from me in a year or so. The spectrum of child to adult is a slippery slope, and right now i'm on the most slippery side. I am definately not a child but many would hesitate to call me an adult. i'm not dependent on my parents but i'm not independent of them either. I feel very old, but then i realize that my parents are almost 40 years older than me, that's most than 3 times my age...
Last year, when i realized that i was 16, i thought it was a shock...i would just be sitting around and it would hit me, "i'm 16 years old." i remember half a lifetime ago, when i was 8 and my brother had just gotten his driver's licence that i would think to myself, "i won't be able to drive until the year 2001." it was an entire lifetime away, and then, all the sudden, i was 16. i sat behind the wheel of my car, my very own car, and pondered what age really meant. how is being 16 that much different than being 15? How is 17 that far away from 16? the actual difference is 31.536 million ticks of a clock (half that for tick-tocks). but now, in less than 31 million seconds, i'll be 18. The government which i will be able to vote for will be able to kill me or draft me, or worse. I'll be able to (legally that is) drive over to a girl's house at 1:30 in the morning, smoke a cigarette after having sex with her, be charged with rape and vote for an anti-drug referendum...all in the same day.
but what is the magic that is bestowed upon me when i reach a certain age? what changes from October 22 to October 23? do i grow more on that day than on any other? do i learn something new? do i become more responsible after living 1.8 decades than i was when i was 1.7 decades old? Age is a tricky thing. i can hear that someone is 75 and i form a picture of how they act, how they look and how they think. and then i can think about a person that's 14 and assume that i know all there is to know about them. but really....age means nothing. it's just a measure of time. and time is something that we humans have created to measure how impatient we are. imagine how care and worry free we'd be if we could just forget about time and stop fussing over age!... ...so go, go and conform. go act your age. until next year when you have to kick it up a notch. tick tock...tick tock...
excerpted from LIES, DECIT, AND FAMILY VALUES : A Collection of Essays About Life in Small Town America
Hi, I'm Stephen Murphy. I'm 17. I have no rights, except the right to live. Although even that can be taken from me in a year or so. The spectrum of child to adult is a slippery slope, and right now i'm on the most slippery side. I am definately not a child but many would hesitate to call me an adult. i'm not dependent on my parents but i'm not independent of them either. I feel very old, but then i realize that my parents are almost 40 years older than me, that's most than 3 times my age...
Last year, when i realized that i was 16, i thought it was a shock...i would just be sitting around and it would hit me, "i'm 16 years old." i remember half a lifetime ago, when i was 8 and my brother had just gotten his driver's licence that i would think to myself, "i won't be able to drive until the year 2001." it was an entire lifetime away, and then, all the sudden, i was 16. i sat behind the wheel of my car, my very own car, and pondered what age really meant. how is being 16 that much different than being 15? How is 17 that far away from 16? the actual difference is 31.536 million ticks of a clock (half that for tick-tocks). but now, in less than 31 million seconds, i'll be 18. The government which i will be able to vote for will be able to kill me or draft me, or worse. I'll be able to (legally that is) drive over to a girl's house at 1:30 in the morning, smoke a cigarette after having sex with her, be charged with rape and vote for an anti-drug referendum...all in the same day.
but what is the magic that is bestowed upon me when i reach a certain age? what changes from October 22 to October 23? do i grow more on that day than on any other? do i learn something new? do i become more responsible after living 1.8 decades than i was when i was 1.7 decades old? Age is a tricky thing. i can hear that someone is 75 and i form a picture of how they act, how they look and how they think. and then i can think about a person that's 14 and assume that i know all there is to know about them. but really....age means nothing. it's just a measure of time. and time is something that we humans have created to measure how impatient we are. imagine how care and worry free we'd be if we could just forget about time and stop fussing over age!... ...so go, go and conform. go act your age. until next year when you have to kick it up a notch. tick tock...tick tock...
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on 20.10.04 at 16:33.
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