twelve

It was the August I was turning twelve. This was long ago and twelve back then was still all innocence and naivety, still a year in which you were considered a child. Children today are just little adults; they’ve been handed a weighty world fraught with worries, about the future, about being gunned down in their classrooms. When I was twelve we worried about the Russians, but it was such a far-off concept, there was nothing concrete in our world about it, nothing like our peers being shot to death, like seeing school photos of dead kids on the front page of your newspaper.

I listened to pop music, I watched cartoons, I rode my bike endlessly around the neighborhood, trying to get lost so I could have an adventure. I liked being a kid. I didn’t have any friends except my cousins and I didn’t care. Being by myself was its own reward; I didn’t have to put on airs, I didn’t have to pretend to be something I was not. I didn’t know it then, but twelve would be the last year I felt that sense of freedom, that innocence. Thirteen would bring angst and anxiety. Thirteen would be life changing.

But here was twelve, here was a world where I spun my 45s of “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” and “Seasons in the Sun” in my room by myself, acting out the songs, dancing, being both thrilled and despondent that Terry Jacks sung my name in a song about death. Here was a world where I was peripherally aware that the President of the United States had resigned, that there was a gas shortage and a cold war, but I trusted the adults in charge to smooth things out and make the world right for us. I was blissfully unaware that adults were fallible, that the people in charge were often corrupt, that the world, in time, would just get worse.

My parents threw a birthday party for me the day before my birthday. I had no real friends except for the girl across the street, who once told me that she could be my friend at home but not at school. But I had cousins, a bevvy of cousins, and they always made up for the fact that I had no one to invite to my parties. We swam in the pool, we ate hot dogs and cake, we played games and roasted in the sun. At the end of the party, my oldest cousin Carol — she had to be about 18 — pulled me aside. “This is the last year you’re going to feel like a kid,” she said. She whispered to me, as if she was imparting the secrets of the world. “Next year is going to suck. And it’s all going to suck after that. Growing up is the worst.” And she left me with those words, without sharing any wisdom, without giving me any idea of how to handle this knowledge or my immediate future. The happiness of the day left me. I felt deflated, defeated. I didn’t want things to suck. I wanted them to always be like they were then; easy, light, carefree. Later, I opened presents and there was a card from my aunt. In it, she had scrawled the words “stay a kid as long as you can.” This conflicted with the words Carol had shared with me and I went to bed that night mentally exhausted, not able to sort out every emotion I was feeling.

And then I was twelve. What was I supposed to do now? Could I still watch cartoons? Could I still listen to my pop 45s or was I supposed to buy albums now and listen to the rock music my older cousins were always foisting on me? There was no set of rules that came with being older than I was the day before, there was just a lingering sense of being aware that my time on this earth was hurrying along and it frightened me. I didn’t want to enter the world Carol had set forth for me, I wanted to abide by my aunt’s wishes and stay a kid for as long as I could. So I got on my bike that morning and rode around my neighborhood, doing nothing else except enjoying the sun and the freedom of being a child before it all started to suck because Carol was right.

I think about twelve year olds today, whether they have that option of remaining childlike in world that forces them to think of very adult things like climate change and active shooter drills. I want for twelve year olds to feel that freedom I did, for their lives to be carefree and easy. But the world we set up for them makes it hard to live that way anymore. None of us are carefree. This is what we’ve made, and our children must live it. I want to shout to every twelve year old: go, get on your bikes and ride around your neighborhood until you get lost and you have to find your way back. Don’t come back until dinner time. Stay out, stay away from your phone, from your television, from the things that bring you too much knowledge. There’s time for that. The time is not now. Not twelve.