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Sunday, May 26, 2002
Kim, Justin, and Zach sat in a playhouse that stood in a field behind Justin home. They were laying on a blanket on the floor of the water-soaked, roofless "house." As they talked and laughed, birds in the nearby trees began chirping, heralding the eminent coming of the sun. They had been talking for hours while walking through a cemetery and along soggy gravel roads before coming to rest in Justin’s wooden backyard fortress. It's like a scene from a Stand By Me, Now and Then, or some other coming-of-age of movie, except the three main characters have already "come-of-age" -- or so they had thought.
They thought that they were going to college to find direction, purpose, a life, or at least a major. But after completing two semesters of higher education and returning home for the summer, they found that they were even more confused than they had been only a year ago in high school. Perhaps they weren't more confused; maybe they were just more urgent to locate answers that they had imagined they would have forever to find. But forever turned into four years or less if they wanted to have a job, a house, and a family when they got out of college. The three saw those around them finding niches, making plans, and preparing for the future, and they desperately wanted to do the same. However, they found it hard. What one job could they do for the rest of their lives? What one person could they marry? What about a car? What about a house? What about children, taxes, salaries, retirement plans? What about the rest of my life? They saw others easily answers such questions put before them. Why was this so difficult for them?
And in the middle of these questions, Zach (and probably the others as well) realized that the film was still rolling. The movie wasn’t over. This movie wasn’t a “coming-of-age” movie. There was no age to come to. Sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one; there was no magical age that once you’ve reached you’ll understand everything, know the answer to every question of life. The adventures and misadventures of growing up won’t end until you’ve stopped maturing. And despite what many people had told him, Zach didn’t believe that one is fully mature until one is dead. If you are mature by age twenty-five and you stop growing, thinking, expanding, then you might as well be dead. Life isn’t the happy ending (or tragic ending, in some cases); life is the two or three reels in between when all the plot twists, all the goofy shanangins and sad pitfalls happen. So as long as the theater is still dark except for the flickering of the film as it flashes every new scene onto the giant silver screen, Zach will be content. He won’t keep asking, “What’s going to happen next?” He won’t wonder why there aren’t any subtitles. He won’t even question when the movie is going to make any sense. He knows that it will all come together in the final scene just before the theme music starts playing and the credits come up and the words The End scroll onto the screen.
| Mr. McBastard | 1:00 AM | | |
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