gap culture

“I want to get laid before college. I haven’t gotten eaten out yet because every time guys wanted to do that, I felt weird because I didn’t wax.”

When I turned sixteen, my friends surprised me at school with a homemade birthday brownie, candles, and a wire-made crown which (after wiping off the frosting) they stuck on the top of my pony tail. We snuck to the roof, and giggled amongst ourselves. There was something about being that age and on the verge of… well, everything.

There were always girls at school who were much more experienced.  You didn’t have to be in the inner circle, discussing the details in order to tell. It was obvious, from the way they walked, a kind of wordliness and attitude. There were always girls who knew how to dress better, knew (magically) how to wear make-up, or get attention of boys.  I won’t try to pretend I never wanted some of their insight (not knowing all that much about how they got it in the first place.)

Nearing high school graduation, I started mentoring younger kids – mostly in middle school. To this day, we still keep in touch. When I got an IM from one of the girls with the above, I tried to play non-chalant college student about to graduate.

It’s true that talk like that isn’t as likely to make me blush as a few years ago. Having been in a serious relationship and watch friends go through hook ups and whatnot, let alone be in a sorority of 70+ girls, I’ve gotten my share of college jadedness. I’m not sure whether I’m shocked or disappointed or either. I think it makes me sad how fast we grow up nowadays and how slow in others.

In our twenties, we still refer to ourselves as “guys” and “girls.” We’re not kids, but we don’t consider ourselves adults either. Most of us in the first world are still in school, dependent upon our parents, and yet we demand to be treated like adults with all the freedoms and privellages. And while we delay growth and responsibility, we race towards adulthood, experimenting younger (it seems) and emulating adult behavior. Pop music gets younger and younger (teens –> youths –> tweens –> bubblegum… whatnot.) There’s a five year gap between the speaker and I, and already it seems an entire generation exists between our values.

I feel neither old nor young, just an odd mixture of concern and relief when I hear something like this. I’m relieved because when I was young, I experienced it in the full freedom that comes with youth – a clear conscience and a kind of blissful ignorance. And I’m concerned for those I dearly love not out of some kind of lofty pious belief, but that one day when they look back, they’ll have wish for a few more years of the kind of freedom that comes only with innocence.

gently, into the night

When ending a relationship with someone you shouldn’t care about, the best goodbyes are the ones that remain unsaid. The severance should be unabrupt, and the issues unresolved. They are the best because you never quite know when it ended or how it came to be this way. And if you’re the one departing, you leave the departed with a series of questions they’ll never knew the answer to. Much like the questions you have of them that remain unanswered: why.

Silence can speak louder than words. Roaringly loud. Your reluctance to resort to words are testament of how far you’ve come, how much you’ve grown. However many years it takes, you do come to your senses. And when you do, the realization is earth-shattering and complete stillness at once. It is huge in its enormity and yet nothing about you, or your life has fundamentally changed.

So years after the fact, when in town, you sit there looking at the screen. At the little black words, a seemingly innocent invitation to reminisce, rekindle, and catch up on news. The drumming of your fingers on the table are the pounding of all possible scenarios in your mind. Everything from violent confrontation to tearful embrace. And that’s when you realize (though not for the first time) that this is a mistake.

Eve’s biggest mistake was not biting into the forbidden fruit, but entertaining the serpent. And while Sun Tzu will tell you to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, he doesn’t have much to say on friends that are enemies. There are some people you watch closely, and others that you stay as far away from as humanly possible.

Whether the lesson is realized on both sides doesn’t matter all that much. Because somewhere along the line, you’re not sure where… it all stopped mattering.