BEDA 22: Growing Up

Growing up was hard.
Not to say that it's totally over. Obviously, because growth never stops until death.

But, you know. I'm back in Commerce and I'm sitting here looking at a picture of myself a few minutes after I was born next to a picture of me on the day I graduated from college. So a lot of, if not all of, the period of my life which is considered "growing up" is over.
And it was tough.
I once considered writing a sample article for The Onion that told the story of a time-traveler who had made his way back to the Jurassic Period. And even though he had been surrounded by gigantic T-Rex that were ready to rip his face off for absolutely no reason, he was still convinced that his own childhood had been more frightening.

It just was, you know? It was really intimidating. Everything was really big and fast and I didn't have the slightest clue what was happening because things never ever seemed to make sense.
In fact, now that I'm older, I look at things that didn't make sense to me as a kid and they still don't make sense. It's like things aren't making sense on purpose, just to trip people up. And I'm not talking about "Why do adults work so hard just for pieces of paper" stuff. That's the kind of thing that made perfect sense as a kid that doesn't make sense to me now. I'm talking about the little things that people say and do that don't make sense at all, and which confuse the hell out of you as a little kid because you expect these people to make sense!
I had a first-grade teacher that made up his own stories when he read to us at circle-time.
I had a third-grade teacher that once asked my entire class (completely out of context) if we would cut off a piece of our own finger so we could suck on the blood if we were trapped in an avalanche.
And on and on and on and on.
I feel like 70% of my childhood was like that. A string of things that didn't make sense to me.

And now I'm older, and I realize the truth:
EVERYONE IS NUTS!
Nobody knows what the hell is going on in the world. The adults you trust and respect so much as a kid haven't got a damn clue what is going on around them, so they say things that contradict the realities you perceive, which makes being a little kid absolutely terrifying.
But I'm grown up now, so I guess things are so bad.