Her

I used to ride the train home from Kindergarten at the same hour that the high schoolers took the 1 train back uptown. I was about... four feet, clinging to a pole and looking up at giants. There was a girl in skinny jeans and bright white Nikes. She had the most perfect curly hair that was always perfectly tousled and was wearing gold hoops, and a backpack thrown over her arm. The subway car would be packed in tight, so that everything was dark at my height - people's legs and bags. So I would just look up at her, with the perfect hair and the perfect look, surrounded by her girlfriends who were laughing, and she was laughing too, a big beautiful smile, with gum tucked in the back. And in front of her was some guy leaning against the subway door, flirting with her and she just kept laughing back. And these people were in some realm of superiority, which seemed like perfection, and where everyone should land in by the time they were teenagers. At that age, being a teenager, was one notch below a deity. It was a place I dreamed of, when I would be at the peak of life and freedom and identity. And beyond that, when I had my identity, I knew exactly who I would be. I wanted to be her.

Fourteen

And no joke, I was sitting there with my calendar open, years flashing by in my head. With my backpack open on my lap, squished into the corner seat of the subway, I opened the vinyl cover of the set of papers that mapped out a year of my middle school life. Staring at the pages, I flipped through, month to month, looking, as I realized that soon it would be June, and another summer, another transition, and half of us would already be fourteen.

Remember back when we were all in fifth grade and turning eleven was a big deal? When being fourteen was one of those far off places of such maturity? Being all grown up and sophisticated with big issues and life that kept going in a dramatic line of constant excitement. Eleven was big enough for us, and we owned every bit of knowledge above those who were still stuck in fourth grade. Slowly we would creep up to be teenagers, but thirteen didn't count 'cause you would still be in middle school, and fourteen would be a teenager. While we could barely feel it, those mythological times were dawning upon us with every Friday afternoon, until we filled those silhouettes.

Soon we would be celebrating sweet sixteens and normals sixteens, and we would feel like kids, but be in the shoes of adults. If we can go from being 10 to 14 without too much changing beyond a bra and a few inches, then how long does it take for us to be eighteen? We would be standing together, remembering when we were little kids. Hopefully.

The best part is, I had these deep revelations about ten years flying by, just by riding home with my planner open.

Teenagers

You know how you're bored of reading about love, hate, and regret? Well I'm sick of writing it. We are all a bunch of infants right now, because we're teenagers, and if by some strange event your are not a teenager reading this, you will probably agree with this. But nothing we do right now, (as teens) actually accounts for anything. We're all about 3 years old right now, wandering around playing pretend with our oh-so-dramatic lives. Big deal. Do you think anyone will care in about eight years? Or like it will really matter? Or that concepts like goals, commitment, love and polynomials, are something that people OUR age, could ever really understand? Of course not!
The flaw in this form of thought, is that if you go about life, convinced that none of it counts until you turn eighteen, how will you learn to cope? How will you be motivated to live another day? And when our infant minds are stressed by the infant situations of our daily lives, it doesn't quite help to say "oh, by the time you're twenty, this won't matter". Because until then, what exactly are you supposed to do? You can't just wait it out, let yourself get beat up, while saying "it won't matter in a few years". So for why, do we even bother with the idea of "childhood is practice for life"? It is a tool to use now and then, to put the complications of growing up, into better perspective. So that we don't let it get to our heads too much. But by all means, take youth seriously because how else will you learn to take adulthood seriously?