42 Years From My Senior Discount

I woke up one morning, and found out I'd gotten old.

It's a strange thing, that has a nasty habit of creeping up on you. Rather than the gradual emancipation from the fog of youth, it seems our brains tend to prefer the sudden shock of a Monday morning, and an immediate awareness that time has, somehow, passed.

You would think it was strange, to feel this way, after so short a time has passed, that so great a chapter has ended. Despite this, every facet of this place seems to bear down on the fact that my life has, somehow, changed.

I signed a check yesterday. It was so strange to see the name on it; the chicken-scratch scrawl that had been there yesterday was the same, but at the same time, was different. The laughable signature was no longer representative of a legal proviso attached to half-rights and a watered-down constitution.

It was my name. My name.

I was told by a rather interesting neighbor on the bus that everything is an illusion, except for everything. Not to me, at least. If tomorrow, I call a rose a sunflower, does that change anything for the rose? Will it sprout bright sunny petals? Shed thorns? Blossom into the new boundaries I've made for it? Of course not. But it's no longer a rose; not to me.

Thus, it makes sense, that at a party in celebration of the many years of someone far older and wiser than myself, I was told the meaning of that mentally-fragile man's words, and it came from a barbershop quartet.

"Life," they sang, "is what you make of it."

Well now it makes sense.

So, in my humble opinion, I think I won't change. I think I'll keep up the good work. keep writing, keep laughing, keep joking and jumping. It's kind of my thing. Sure I'll vote. I'll stay out of trouble, and cringe with a smile when others celebrate with a cigar, but for the most part, I'll just keep being me, as it turns out, I'm pretty good at it.

I mean, after all, I'm only 18.