Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


7.02.2006  

The Tide of Teendom

On July 3, 1993, Kayla Kawailehua Emiko Ing was born. She's my niece, the oldest one of the grandkiddies. If you do the math, she's still 12, but tomorrow, she turns 13.

Thirteen.

Right now, she's still a pre-teen. 12 is a nice and safe number; it has no "teen" at the end of it, and it doesn't make me scrunch my forehead and feel irrationally old. 12 still hints at innocence, even if that innocence is filtered through my naïveté as an uncle who's never had a teenage niece. 12 means Kayla still speaks a language I understand, has not yet been thrust into the world of TeenSpeak, and still says, "Uncle Johnny, you're late!" with a certain niece-ish affection.

Tomorrow, all of that changes. There's going to be a switch that goes off with a click, and all of a sudden, the tide of teendom will come rushing in to drown away all that once was. She'll no longer ask me to pick her up from school when I go home, she'll no longer read the books I tell her to read, and she'll no longer tell me that boys are gross. I dread the day she asks me for fashion advice; anyone can ask me that, just not her, 'cause that means she no longer thinks boys are gross. She'll become foreign to me, speaking a language I once might have understood, but never comprehended. I'll look at her and shake my head in disbelief and wonder, "Where did the time go?" She'll graduate from high school, from college, get married, have kids, her kids will have kids...

Ok, maybe I'm getting carried away. I mean, it's just another day away, right? It's just another year...it can't be that bad, can it?

Thirteen...*shudder*.

posted by Bolo | 10:09 AM
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