you are seventeen going on eighteen. this summer, i've hung out a very little bit with a few younger siblings of my friends. they are of varying age but the ones that have impacted me are the ones about to head off the college. so young, so enthusiastic, so growns up but yet still so naive. i talk to them about what they want to do in school, what they hope to major in, what their thoughts are post-high school. but even as i seriously listen, i don't take them seriously. not because they aren't serious about what they think, or that they're immature or anything, but i think "yeah, you think you have all these plans going into college but four (or five, six, seven) years later, it'll be totally different." it's like i eliminate the possibility that they'll emerge from college exactly the way they have it planned. after all, how many of us did that?



so when they speak about wanting to be a doctor, a political science major, a businessman, i nod and say "good luck" while thinking about how much they'll change in four years. in retrospect, nobody has any clue what college will do to them. so much of your life changes -- socially, mentally, emotionally -- that i feel like it's impossible to predict what might happen to you as a person. so when i talk to these eighteen year olds, i'm trying to capture an image of them so that i can compare it to what they become in four years.



and i also feel old. so old. i'm like eight years older than these kids who are going off to college this year. from the outside, these kids seem much more prepared. they are physically more mature, mentally older and generally, much savvier than most of my peers were at eighteen. and in truth, most of the people i knew at eighteen and then at twenty two remained pretty much the same. but the experiences of college shape and change us, even if not dramatically. i wonder if these eighteen year olds have any idea what's in store for them. i kind of want to say to them, "you don't know nothing kid. come talk to me in four years."



but even as i think this, i am stunned by how old they seem. i relate to them, even though they are almost a decade younger than i am. they've read and studied stuff that i barely know anything about. sometimes talking to them is infinitely more interesting than talking to people my age, just because they have fresh thoughts and new perspectives. something about talking to youth is kind of invigorating, even as it showcases how i really am in my mid-twenties and not a teenager anymore. and even though i've always been inclined to think that i could pass for a high school student, i don't think so anymore.



i wonder if this is how older people felt talking to us. when we were freshmen in college, talking to seniors or people who were out of college. they must have looked at us like "man, what tards." i think i'm setting the lower and upper limits for people i can relate to at precisely eighteen and a half years old and thirty two, respectively.



"age ain't nothing but a number." or is it?