My birthday is fast approaching. Turning twenty is a pretty major milestone, but it’s hard to feel particularly emotional about it.

The curtains are being drawn on my adolescent years—my last chance (for about fifty years) to use age as an excuse for irresponsible behaviour. Should I get smashed and burn something down, channelling years of unspent teen angst into a single concentrated act of catharsis?

Different

The most striking thing about the second decade of my life, I think, is how much of the major change has taken place just within the last two years. Moving away for school is a big step, but many things still surprise me.

Could my high-school self have ever predicted that he’d soon develop an irrational love of cooking, social dance, and his Apple computer?

I had no more idea then than I do now of what lies ahead. But remembering the big changes in the recent past serves to keep me open-minded about the future.

Older

At my Lindy Hop class, we rotate partners to practice various steps. So there are these little snatches of conversation that take place in between the breathless rock-step triple-step, step step—whoops, turn the other way, yeah, there like that.

Several times over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve had, with various different women, some approximation of the following exchange:

“So what is it you do?”

I’m a student, at Waterloo.

“Oh yeah? Like, grad studies?”

No no, I’m just done the second year of my engineering program.

“Oh my, really? So you must be like 20 then?”

Actually, still nineteen for another month.

“Wow. Okay…”

Should I be surprised? When I did a teaching assistant co-op in my final semester of high school, my twelfth-grade pupils thought I was in second year university.

And now that I’m in second year, my dance classmates think I’m mid-twenties.

I persuade myself to interpret the mistake as a complement. But is it really? There are plenty of teen stereotypes with which I’m happy not to have been associated (getting smashed and burning things), but while I was busy engaging in responsible hobbies like adult LEGO clubs, did I let the whole time just slip by?

Or was all that mature stuff part of highly clever scheme to short-circuit adolescence and its absurd pressures? Is it bad that now, no longer a high-schooler, I can enjoy the idealised world presented by The O.C.?

Now that I’m nineteen, should I be going out to clubs rather than writing a book and learning to swing dance?

Perhaps. But the book and the dancing are just so much fun.

And hey, it’s not like I’m completely boring: When it comes to Morty’s wings, my debauchery knows only the bounds of my stomach.

Mike

p.s. I apologize for all the recent server errors on here. If you feel inclined to leave a comment, please save the text onto your clipboard before trying to submit, just in case the site swallows it whole.

← Earlier Later → Posted at 12:17 pm to Reflection.