Backwards

I think that I have some sort of Benjamin Button thing happening. Heaven knows that I'm not looking any younger, and I've never felt young, but I seem to be experiencing a lot of things backwards.

As a kid and a teen, I deeply resented the stereotype that kids felt immortal and invincible. I never felt either. I was always the kid saying, "But someone could get hurt!" I was not a risk taker or a thrill seeker. I was acutely aware that death, dismemberment, pain or scarring were very real possibilities. I worried, I fretted, I avoided risk and danger as best I could. I've never "bailed out" of swings or jumped off of a diving board. (Really.)

Describing my behavior as a child to my middle daughter recently elicited The Look and the verdict, "So you were a wet blanket." The wettest, thank you very much.

Said child, in contrast, had no fear as a child. None. I remember clearly having to repeatedly grab the back of her swimsuit and haul her into the shallows at age 2, because she'd just keep walking into the water, even after it was over her head. Not just once, mind you, but over and over. It never occurred to her, in any situation, that she might get hurt or experience an unpleasant outcome. She looked at people as though they were crazy or unintelligible if they warned her. When she did get hurt, she brushed it off like Monty Python's Black Knight - "It's only a flesh wound."

It wasn't until her 20s that it started occurring to her that she might get hurt, and that hurt was bad. Facing situations that she'd never given a second thought to suddenly had her realizing, "Someone could get hurt." Slowly, she noticed that situations caused her worry, and that she was being more cautious.

"This is how the other half lives," I told her. "Welcome to adulthood."

"I hate it! How do people function like this?" she wanted to know.

I, on the other hand, am slowly growing into feelings of invincibility.

More and more, I find myself mentally spreading my arms and saying, "Bring it on. I've got this." Fear of water? I'll go in a submarine, and then across the Atlantic on a ship. Fear of being disliked? Recently I ran into a kid I'd gone to high school with, a kid who was so much cooler than I was that I spent all of high school awed and intimidated. I may have spoken three sentences to this kid during the entire four years we went to school together. Now that I'm much older, twice my high school weight and going gray (and, unfortunately, bald), what did I do? Run up and say hello, then hug him/her.

Kids are supposed to be the dreamy ones, too, setting ridiculous life goals like, "marry a prince." I was such a practical kid. My goals were things like, "be able to afford groceries." I was clear that I could choose any one of hundreds of paths through life, could be a doctor or teacher or lawyer or painter - but I never imagined, or wanted, the usual things kids covet: obscene wealth, fame, privilege. I still don't, but now I see no barriers to pie-in-the-sky plans. If somebody had told me when I was 18 that they wanted to be something ridiculous and impractical, I would have given them the "It's really difficult to make it" speech, and meant it. Now, I'd give them the "Go for it!" speech, and mean it. Sure, it takes hard work and more than a little luck, but it's not impossible. Knock 'em dead, kid. You can do it.

As a kid, I was easy to psych out or intimidate. I know that there were times that I lost competitions just because I let the other guy(s) get to me. Not any more.

Children are supposed to be trusting; I had severe trust issues. OK, I still have some, and there's good reasons for them, but I no longer feel that I have to do everything, or that something is doomed to failure if multiple people have multiple jobs to do. I only have to do my job, my little part, and not worry, or even necessarily think about, anyone else's job. (Sometimes you carry The One Ring and sometimes you kill the Orcs - am I right?)

I never was young, and I never will be, but that's OK. I may have the best of both worlds.