By the time this issue hits stands, I will have had my 20th birthday. However, with the mark of completing young adulthood, I feel I have reverted back to my second childhood.
Yesterday, for the first time in a very long time since I was young, I woke up early for no reason, only to watch cartoons. Anime. Pokemon. Little people ran across my screen so I quickly turned it off.
I looked in my cabinet for some Lucky Charms, Coco Puffs and Captain Crunch only to find an old box of Raisin Bran. With a refrigerator full of jam and no bread, I now had cereal with no milk.
I walked down the side of the Student Center with no umbrella and opened my mouth so that I could taste the rain. After all, I was thirsty, and it was free.
None of these things made sense. Something was wrong.
I just beat the sun up. I couldn’t remember being up this early and not going back to sleep since prior to late last semester. I never really had time to talk to strangers, take a sip of coffee or even meditate.
Yet, less than 48 hours ago, I struggled to hold on to the last of innocence that would surely seep out of my pores and escape me once I turned 20.
I am now an age where I have to speak up, when people can hear me louder than behind a desk.
I’ve got to make some decisions.
Life will now be lived a little less lighthearted.
And I can still remember when my favorite CD was the Spice Girls. I can still remember how every girl wanted to be “Baby Spice,” become the Pink Power Ranger, featured on its original season. They wanted to sing better than Lauryn Hill singing “His Eye is on the Sparrow” on “Sister Act” or marry Tevin Campbell when they got older.
Yesterday, I turned 20. I won’t be able to live my dream of remaining a Toys R’ Us kid or play with pogs and hopscotch on the sidewalks.
I won’t be able to take real field trips to who-knows-where for however long, eat lunch from brown, paper sacs and hear a story before I take a nap in the middle of the day.
No “Red light, green light,” “Mother, May I?,” tetherball or four square. There will be no playing chiefs and Indians. There will be no playing dodgeball.
Yesterday, I turned 20.
I’ve traded Hi-C fruit punch and Gushers snack pack for a Mocha Frappacino from Starbucks with a side of coffee cake.
I’ve traded Osh Kosh overalls and Oxford shoes for black, linen slacks and Nine West heels.
I’ve traded New Kids on the Block, “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and “My Little Ponies” for “Girlfriends,” Usher and “The Real World Season (what number is it?)”
Yesterday, I turned 20.
Not four, an earth number. Not five, which is the age of knowledge. Nor did I turn seven, which is the number of completeness.
Yesterday, two decades will have passed since my mother was in labor, 10 years since I had a Halloween birthday party at a makeshift Chuck E. Cheese’s and two years since I have lived independently.
Today, I am grown. Today, the word “youth” does not apply to me. Today, I am 20, an age that I do not welcome.
Adrianna Gardner, a junior creative writing major, is arts editor of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at agardner@ulv.edu.
