Former Focus 4/10/09

Maturity is just a short break in adolescence.

Jules Feiffer
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Come in. I've been waiting for you.
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I wouldn't live through my adolescence again for anything. It was a desperate time. It's jumping in the water before you can swim. It's making a sky dive and learning how to operate the parachute on your way down. It's trying to make a good impression with a crop of pimples on your face. It's falling in love and thinking you are the first person ever to do so. It's discovering sex before you discover its dangers, It's having your heart broken for the first time and knowing that no one else has ever felt such pain, It's trusting untrustworthy teachers. It's knowing that your parents are stupid and your friends are wise. All together adolescence is out right insanity from which most of us recover, but some don't.

It has been over half a century since I was an adolescent I wouldn't go back and do it again, and yet in my clear thinking moments I can realize that in many ways I'm still the boy I was at 15. Many things have changed, of course, but the things I loved and admired back then I still do. I still carry the hopes and dreams of my boyhood, though in less grandiose forms. While sex is not much more than a memory I could still fall in love, if the opportunity occurred. I might even be capable of romance in limited ways. If I discover a pimple on my face I don't rush off to the drugstore for some useless therapeutic cream. I won't try the sky dive or the bungee jump but I still cherish the pleasure of discovering new things in life. I can still enjoy fireworks, a ball game or a puppet show. I'm still capable of saying "Wow!"

In short, the last several decades has been nothing more than a short break in the roller coaster ride of my youth.

DB - The Vagabond
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Be a bright, warm spring afternoon to a friend today.
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