The Month of November

Let’s face it, Peter Pan got it right. Growing up sucks. As you grow older you are forced to take on more responsibilities, work and other things that are just not fun. All these things seem to increase with no other reason than age itself and fun is usually just shoved to the wayside.
Once you’ve reached a certain age (somewhere around fifteen or sixteen) you are expected to begin working. And once you’ve begun you are expected to keep on working until you are either incapable of work or are dead on the floor. No other way out. As a small child however you can run around and have fun and the only work you are subject to is that involving crayons. Beyond the crayon stage the work is still there, it grows a bit, but not tremendously, but the the real whiplash comes from when you are expected to take on a job in addition to new overwhelming school duties. Or, during that sliver of time without them (the dreaded summer job). And these jobs are generally ones that you hate doing. And yet you are told that you should, “Get used to it; it’s what the real world’s like.” Well, for me in this period of time that I’m not in the real world, I would like to savor the freedom I have, and not do these hateful jobs.
See over this summer I was forced to take on one of these jobs. I got the generic first job of dishwasher in a little seafood shack down my street. Not too bad I thought after my first day. Just washing dishes and a few odd jobs. I still had that feeling that you get when you’re doing something brand new. It felt exciting!
That didn’t last.
I don’t know exactly how the decision came about or why I wasn’t notified at the time but I soon became a full lobster picker. I didn’t wash another dish. Lobster picking, for those of you who don’t live in the fish obsessed lands of Harpswell, is getting every last scrap of meat out of lobster so lobster rolls or lobster can be made. It is, one of the most tedious, annoying, and smelly jobs I know of. And I had to do it for six hours straight. And I say with the utmost sarcasm: Good times.
No.
Don’t ever get stuck with that job if you can avoid it.
Now also with growing up, you get something called “responsibility”. Yet again the load increasing with age.
“You get more responsibility!”
Parents and adults always seem to say it like it’s a present! Well thank you Father Time! Now I can get blamed for bad things that happen and am held reliable for the outcome of many events! Whoopty freakin doo. I understand how these things lead to privileges that I desire, like driving, but don’t try and wrap them up in shiny paper, alright?
I’d also just like to throw out there, that there are certain unpleasant things that go along with the literal growing up. Hormones raging, sleep patterns messed up, hunger going crazy, and general confusion all play their part.
I realize I can’t run from growth like Peter Pan, and I realize all these things our necessary to our society (which I am becoming increasingly unsure of courtesy of my own abnormal thought and Thoreau’s). But they are still irksome. And however much I like presents and parties, my birthday, and all others come with a series of cons to go along with the pros.