in between a bowling alley and a roast beef joint...
I was surprised by a choking panic that climbed up in my throat like dry fire. it was the first time a feeling like that came over me that year- that long, strange year- but not the last. yet its hard for me to explain, or even define. it had something to do with realizing that it was August 11, 1978, that i was going to be a senior in high school next month, and that when school started again it meant the end of a long, quiet phase of my life. i was getting ready to be a grown-up, and i saw that somehow- saw it for sure, for the first time in that lovely but somehow ancient spill of golden light flooding down the alleyway between a bowling alley and a roast beef joint. and i think i understood then that what really scares people about growing up is that you stop trying on the life-mask and start trying on another one. if being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die. the feeling passed, but in its wake i felt shaken and melancholy. neither state was much like my usual self.
- Stephen King
- Stephen King