Opinion
I suppose it was easiest as a baby. All I did was eat, sleep and cry, and people ate that stuff up. Soon, I learned to walk and talk, and then I was expected to behave.
The most fun was during elementary school. School days were fun, the work was simple, I enjoyed learning and I was around people I genuinely liked all day. When I went home I spent an hour at best on homework, and spent the rest of the day watching cartoons and playing video games.
I enjoyed video games the most. I would beg my mom to buy me one. I would play it, beat it, start it over, beat it again, start it over and beat it again until I got something new. I can’t enjoy playing a game like that over and over again anymore. I know my mom didn’t appreciate me always switching the fresh batteries in the remotes with the dead ones in my Game Boy. I had to collect eight more badges in the latest Pokémon game.
Middle school was certainly different. More was expected of me, I was exposed to more things and I didn’t always handle certain situations in the best way. I choose to remember those years, for those afternoons I got to spend with friends playing multiplayer games for hours without it getting old.
High school also seemed like it would go on forever. I learned not to make the mistakes I made in middle school, but I fell into other pitfalls. I still had my fun, and I found out more about myself.
Back then, I always wanted to be older. I always wanted to do more. In adults, I only saw things like driving, getting into R-rated movies and owning my own place. But things like bills, jobs and school getting more difficult never occurred to me. Now I’m a senior in college. I can drive, I see an R-rated movie almost every week and I’m splitting a place with a roommate. But I’m longing for the time long gone.
Everything was fresher back then. There was a lot I didn’t know. Whenever I see a kid now, I’m a little envious. Sure, I didn’t have an iPad at that age, but it wasn’t about what we had, it was about the mindset. It was about having as much fun as possible without a care or worry in the world.
It worries me that I’m only at the cusp of adulthood. I work, I pay my rent, I’ve accumulated a large amount of debt in the form of loans that allow me to go to school, but I stil have my mom and family to help me out. I know it won’t always be like this. I just know the time will come when insurance, taxes and repaying loans will become part of my everyday life. Not to mention, more lessons and hardships that I don’t even know exist yet. Others my age have already made the transition, and I know I’ll be there soon enough, and it’s something I need to accept and stop fighting.
It’s not always going to be fun, but sitting across my room as I type this column is my newest Nintendo handheld system. In it, is the latest Pokémon game. I’ll graduate soon enough and eventually the floodgates holding back my loans will be unleashed, but that’s a little while off. Until then, I’ll just focus on catching Pikachu again in this latest game.
