20
What it means to be twenty (incoherent ramblings of the hermit Elizabeth):
As most of you know, this week I turned twenty, a curious age by all accounts (how many accounts? ALL of them, Damnit!). Perhaps most obviously, this means that I am no longer a teenager. This is in some senses a relief. For example: I can no longer write with “teenaged angst.” Now “angsty” poetry can be correctly translated as “bad” poetry. It’s about time.
On the other side of this (as most things in the world have two sides or none at all), I can no longer write off my ideas as youthfully idealistic. Well, perhaps I can, but now they are bordering on what the world lovingly calls foolishness (long live the fools).
Let it be known that I mean all of these observations to be from the eyes of the world. Little has changed in me since Saturday, except when I write my age next to my name, it will be read 20 instead of 19.
This little number is supposed to represent something: greater independence, a stronger sense of responsibility. Luckily for me, some of this is in stasis while I remain in college, but it will catch up soon enough. I need to get a job.
To tell the truth, none of the above really bothers me. The one thing that bothers me has to do with the media of my childhood.
I am now past the age where I have to survive.
Sure, children die in children books, but have you noticed the specific cut off? In Shade’s Children it was fourteen. As I read the book once at thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, the realization hit me pretty profoundly. I am no longer an innocent. I can now be held accountable, not only for my actions, but for those of my community.
Tree guardians never say “You are forgiven your trespass because you are young” to twenty year olds, nor do soldiers spare the twenty year old citizen death.
Perhaps this would all make a great deal more sense if I *felt* different. I don’t feel any more or less innocent than when I was thirteen; I was and remain a fool, only now (literarily at the very least) I can be punished for it.
This is what it means to be twenty.
(edit: red is a color. read is a verb)
As most of you know, this week I turned twenty, a curious age by all accounts (how many accounts? ALL of them, Damnit!). Perhaps most obviously, this means that I am no longer a teenager. This is in some senses a relief. For example: I can no longer write with “teenaged angst.” Now “angsty” poetry can be correctly translated as “bad” poetry. It’s about time.
On the other side of this (as most things in the world have two sides or none at all), I can no longer write off my ideas as youthfully idealistic. Well, perhaps I can, but now they are bordering on what the world lovingly calls foolishness (long live the fools).
Let it be known that I mean all of these observations to be from the eyes of the world. Little has changed in me since Saturday, except when I write my age next to my name, it will be read 20 instead of 19.
This little number is supposed to represent something: greater independence, a stronger sense of responsibility. Luckily for me, some of this is in stasis while I remain in college, but it will catch up soon enough. I need to get a job.
To tell the truth, none of the above really bothers me. The one thing that bothers me has to do with the media of my childhood.
I am now past the age where I have to survive.
Sure, children die in children books, but have you noticed the specific cut off? In Shade’s Children it was fourteen. As I read the book once at thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, the realization hit me pretty profoundly. I am no longer an innocent. I can now be held accountable, not only for my actions, but for those of my community.
Tree guardians never say “You are forgiven your trespass because you are young” to twenty year olds, nor do soldiers spare the twenty year old citizen death.
Perhaps this would all make a great deal more sense if I *felt* different. I don’t feel any more or less innocent than when I was thirteen; I was and remain a fool, only now (literarily at the very least) I can be punished for it.
This is what it means to be twenty.
(edit: red is a color. read is a verb)