The Age of Uncertainty Uncertainty of Age
What makes you feel old, my child? Is it the roll of years, the ache of bones, the strain of failing muscles?
No, it is change. Change, more than anything else, makes us feel old. Just visited VJ on Wed for a Writers Circle gathering. Half-swore at myself as bus 36 neared VJ. I’d forgotten that this is “rainbow term”—my colloquialism for the transient mazy first 3 months when JC1s are still “rainbow-clothed and tentatively collar-pinned” (to quote one of my own poems). The myriad colours, curious stares of passing (taller!) J1s and general intense swirling activity around me only highlighted change which in turn highlights age.
I am not old. When I say I am old, or bemoan my fossil-dom to lucky still-in-school juniors, I actually mean I feel alienated. Out of place. I am not needed, and only provisionally welcomed. Caught half-way between Young and (truly) Old; unwillingly evicted from the former, forced down the unwilling path towards the later.
Drive my car (beepbeep, beepbeep, yeah)
Though I know I’ll regret announcing this, I’m planning to start driving lessons sometime after CNY. Have been avoiding doing so because the receipt of my license (optimally by June) will only mean having to run errands, and having to give people lifts (though, yeah it’ll feel cool initially, giving friends lifts and feeling powerful for some shallow reason). Partly also hesitant because driving, well, feels old.
If you think about it, driving is very much a parent-like thing. It confers upon a person a mantle of responsibility and (to an extent) self-sacrifice. The driver is the one who can’t get drunk on a boy’s nite out. The driver is the last to get home after dropping everyone off. The driver is the only one who can’t doze off during a long boring drive. And of course, on all those TV serials, it’s the adult who says to the kid “come on boy, I’ll drive you home.”
Driving: not just another card to add to my wallet, but (yet another) mantle to bear on my shoulders.
What makes you feel old, my child? Is it the roll of years, the ache of bones, the strain of failing muscles?
No, it is change. Change, more than anything else, makes us feel old. Just visited VJ on Wed for a Writers Circle gathering. Half-swore at myself as bus 36 neared VJ. I’d forgotten that this is “rainbow term”—my colloquialism for the transient mazy first 3 months when JC1s are still “rainbow-clothed and tentatively collar-pinned” (to quote one of my own poems). The myriad colours, curious stares of passing (taller!) J1s and general intense swirling activity around me only highlighted change which in turn highlights age.
I am not old. When I say I am old, or bemoan my fossil-dom to lucky still-in-school juniors, I actually mean I feel alienated. Out of place. I am not needed, and only provisionally welcomed. Caught half-way between Young and (truly) Old; unwillingly evicted from the former, forced down the unwilling path towards the later.
Drive my car (beepbeep, beepbeep, yeah)
Though I know I’ll regret announcing this, I’m planning to start driving lessons sometime after CNY. Have been avoiding doing so because the receipt of my license (optimally by June) will only mean having to run errands, and having to give people lifts (though, yeah it’ll feel cool initially, giving friends lifts and feeling powerful for some shallow reason). Partly also hesitant because driving, well, feels old.
If you think about it, driving is very much a parent-like thing. It confers upon a person a mantle of responsibility and (to an extent) self-sacrifice. The driver is the one who can’t get drunk on a boy’s nite out. The driver is the last to get home after dropping everyone off. The driver is the only one who can’t doze off during a long boring drive. And of course, on all those TV serials, it’s the adult who says to the kid “come on boy, I’ll drive you home.”
Driving: not just another card to add to my wallet, but (yet another) mantle to bear on my shoulders.
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