When Did We Stop Wanting To Be Pirates?
We would never voluntarily give up the pirate life or the adventurous quests.
Trying to recall my childhood, I have this core memory of me and my friends wanting to be pirates, playing and pretending to be a crew aboard a ship, sailing across the ocean, trying to find hidden treasures while fighting other pirates and avoiding mysterious mermaids and sea creatures.
Our imagination was wild, and so was our desire for life.
Nobody knew when would be the last time that we would sail. It had to be one day like all the others; I don’t really remember. I’m sure we ran aground and left with the promise of meeting again tomorrow, but that tomorrow never came.
I’m sure it had something to do with school. We would never voluntarily give up on our fellow pirates, but when math and physics got in the way, along with a second foreign language and extra hours of study and homework, there wasn’t a lot that we could do.
But when did we really stop wanting to be pirates?
It had to be something about adults talking about “real jobs” and growing up; it must be that, because we would never voluntarily give up the pirate life or the adventurous quests.
And we ended up going to college according to our system’s requirements, studying various things about the world and how to be useful in society. But I’m pretty sure that pirate lessons weren’t included, nor were lessons on how to read decrypted maps, so it kind of seems like a waste of time.
Did we really stop wanting to be pirates, or did we just let other people convince us that in order to be useful gears of a broken system, we should give up our dreams, our desires, and our precious imagination?
I never stopped wanting to be a pirate, if I want to be honest with myself. My desire for those magical quests never faded away. I’m sure more than anything that my gut back then was absolutely right.
So I take a piece of paper and transform it into an ocean. I hide inside mermaids, treasures, and ancient curses. My pen is my Jolly Roger, and it takes me to the ends of the world. I think I did it after all. I became a pirate.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard!
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