Juxtapose

I am now nineteen. Old, yet young. I feel old, anyhow, like I've been around for a million years without really getting anywhere. It's funny the things they say about birthdays. My church always hyped up the transition to thirteen years of age for purposes of stirring up excitement over the teen group activities. Being the typical emo-before-I-knew-what-that-was/goth-without-the-whiteface thirteen year old that I was, my thirteenth year was, without a doubt, the absolute most miserable year I have lived so far.

By the time I had worked off my angst and had branched out from reading Poe and despondent Roaring Twenties F. Scott Fitzgerald novels, I was anticipating my sixteenth birthday, which, as they say, is supposedly "Sweet Sixteen." Again, this, I feel, was a letdown. All that stuff you're supposed to do when you're sixteen is completely moot when you're a prude and you don't drink (alcohol, dummy), which was true in my case. I spent most of my sixteenth year studying theology and Koine Greek in Bible college, spending time with Yia, and driving with my new license. In my Tercel. RIP. Not to be disrespectful to it, I have to acknowledge that being sixteen wasn't all that bad, in retrospect. In fact, it was a good year overall, with low points and high points averaging out to a nice evenness. It just wasn't one of those Sweet Sixteen things where I became all liberated and self-identified and all that. I remember one time I went out on this date with this guy who lives up the street from me. I re-met him when he came for an appointment at the chiropractors' where I work. It wasn't even technically a date, since I knew he wasn't a Christian and he knew I was. We had a few interesting talks about that sort of thing, and it was nice to be able to tell someone about God who hadn't heard it all before. Anyhow, we talked for a while and eventually ended up going to see the first of the Lord of the Rings movies. I was mildly intruiged by the thought of going on a date, since previous encounters with interesting, good-looking guys had been more of the "discuss our entire life plans," type of thing. You know, I Kissed Dating Goodbye-worthy type stuff. In fact, I've never really understood casual dating and I've never participated in it, save for that one date with the guy up the street. The concept, at the time, of going to see a non-romantic movie with a semi-random nice guy just to go out on a Friday night seemed to be the Thing To Do. I figured - doesn't everyone have to do that at least once when they're sixteen? On the one hand, it meant that I got to experience some little sliver of the typical teenage existence that I was perpetually missing out on, and on the other, it only proved to me why I usually tried to stay out of the typical teenage existence in the first place. I mean, even the fact that we were going to see a movie as a date was pretty much going against all my "real dating" ideals where boy and girl get together and walk the boardwalk under a sunny sky, discussing Life Issues and otherwise such telling things such as favorite books, methods of child-rearing (Cassie: ?Yar, I was spanked? Oh yeah, if I get married and have them, mine are definitely not getting away with Time-Outs, man??), and the validity of conservative politics. But back to the movie-as-a-date idea - really, how the heck can you discuss Life Issues when there are twelve-foot-high orcs being stabbed to death right over your head, for pity's sake?

By midway through the movie, however, the bitter facts that I always said were true of Friday night movie dates in the year 2001 were proved truth to me - apparently, even semi-random nice guys that open the car door for you and pay for your movie ticket usually end up talking to their many friend girls on their cell phones that they don't know how to shut off during a moviedate. I got bored, he got bored, and that was that. The first and last official date I ever went on. And there you have it: my Sweet Sixteen.

My eighteenth birthday was the next one they all always hyped up to an unimaginable level. Again, the obvious limits of this hype are unavoidable; if you?re one of those Jesus-followers, your eighteenth remains relatively boring in many of the same ways as your sixteenth, not only because you aren?t about to sow your wild oats like everyone else, but also because you realize how dumb it is to go around sowing wild oats when you?re better off sitting at home with the fam and having a quiet family dinner; oh, say, something mundane and innocuous ? pasta, maybe? I?ve always preferred semolina-based products to oats, anyways.

If you?re an eighteen-year-old Christian, you probably don?t smoke, so legalized cigarettes are a non-issue, and hopefully there?s no reason you need to buy pr0n, so all that stuff that people say should make up your eighteenth year is pretty much, again, a moot issue. As it was for me. I?ve always been more of an adult-fraternizer in a pierced, ex-homeschooler sort of way anyways, so while my close friends are about my age, give or take two or three years, most of the people I talk to besides them are those who are more in the realm of my parents? age. Adults. Old people. In any case, due to blatant fraternization with these so-called adults, I?ve always fancied myself a few years older than I really am in truth. All of this is, of course, snotty oldest-child-?I am more mature than you because of _____? trash that I allow myself to bask in, but it?s all too obnoxiously true. Thankfully, I?m enough of a cynic to see that even my own whims of fancy are mostly rooted in the age-old naïve teenage hope that somehow, reading Russian fiction and posting on a sparsely-decorated blog makes one a member of the Intellectual Elite of Maturity. My cynicism tells me that this is so not true that it?s not even funny. The paradox ? does the fact that I realize my own immaturity render me mature? Survey says: ?No. You?re practically still in diapers at this point. Get over yourself, sucker.?

However, as fun it is to poke fun at myself for my own faux maturity (my family gets even more fun out of this than I do), the real point here is that, whether or not I have crossed that wonderful bridge into adulthood beyond the legal designation, there are great things to remember about this past year. In fact, getting to specifics, I?ve never had such a good year that I can remember. There were some great things, some mundane, but the following are those that I recall at the moment:

+ I registered to vote.
+ I got to become even closer to my parents.
+ I watched Stine and Nick get married.
+ I finished up a great year at a great school.
+ I learned to drive stick.
+ I joined a sportsman?s club.
+ I saw Yia being taken care of and healthy.
+ I let God beat me down until He picked me up.
+ I acquired the skill of living almost exclusively on peanut butter and jelly white bread sandwiches.
+ I saved up forty bucks? worth of change in nickels, dimes, and pennies in a jar.
+ I went Greek dancing twice.
+ I went to the beach and walked in the cold water until my ankles went arthritic.
+ And I finally did a load of laundry and vacuumed my room.

And all this exciting stuff was polished off satisfactorily by a lovely two-week vacation with no work, no school, wonderful friends, and a beautiful wedding to go to and be a part of. Yes. This has been a good year.