This Age

So I'm in church today right... and there's another young lady there my age. She's married, but she's a real cool person, so she's fun to talk to. The problem is, she's also very, very beautiful, in the rare "I'm not like the other girls you see every day" type way. So, of course, it's kinda hard to casually talk to her without the mind wandering into the regions of romance. I find myself keeping my distance from her to avoid thinking in that direction. But that's this age for ya...

Honestly man, what is it that we lose between childhood and adulthood that just makes it impossible for relationships to stay the same? I would even go so far as to say from high school to college... there's SUCH a relational transition. In high school, it's easy to have friends of the opposite sex and only be romantically interested in one or two. Now, it's like every person of the opposite sex you come in contact with, they're in your life for a romantic purpose; heck, even your homies constantly sift through the people in your circle to find a mate.

They say girls mature faster than boys. The more I think about that, the more I feel sorry for them, lol. That's not at all a diss to women, but seriously, now that I'm "matured", I admit that I miss the "immaturity". So for you ladies to mature faster than us, that means you've been caught up in this madness for a little while longer. My condolences. I think back to the things that we did as boys, having not the slightest inkling of how it would affect girls in their maturity; if I had understood better what it was like for you, I know I would've acted differently.

But then there's the flipside of this age. On one hand, you have the difficulty relating to the opposite sex on a platonic level; on the other hand you have the competition and discrepancies with people of the same sex. Real talk, ever since the middle of high school, SOOO many of my friends aren't friends anymore. But before that, going all the way back to KINDERGARTEN, we were FAMILY. I mean, WHAT HAPPENED?!

Females, I saw it happening with them much earlier cuz again, girls do mature faster. Not that I'm saying beefing is mature, but I'm willing to bet hormones play a role in it. Anywasy... Girls were getting bent out of shape over this and that. "He's my man" (as if we were men and women and not boys and girls) and "she's wearing my dress" and all that; me and the fellas used to laugh at all that. But datgommit if a few years later the fellas weren't beefin with each other! I do my best to contact old friends... I go one this friend's house; he's not cool with another friend because somebody jacked some speakers from somebody. I go to the other friends house, he's not cool with a third friend because the third friend messed with his wife. I go to the third friend, he's done dirt and got illegitimate kids. But I even found out some of that from a fourth friend. All the while, I'm thinking to myself, "But I'm still cool with ALL OF THESE CATS. Why can't they be cool with each other like it used to be?"

It's amazing, cats get older and feel like they gotta hold grudges now. When we were younger, yeah, stuff happened. And we got over it. It was no bigger a deal than we made it. Now cats gotta make a big deal about everything. If you can't trust a cat, cool, then don't trust him. But this is the SAME CAT that you knew you couldn't trust back then; what's different? It breaks my heart; I've recovered so many numbers of so many old friends, but I'm afraid if I call them all at the same time and we meet up somewhere, somebody might get shot over some dumb piece of material.

These are the friends in life that you can't replace; heck, the friends that I can't replace. The ones that were with me when I was a child and ignorant to the big world around me. Before I was marked "the smart kid", we all came into knowledge and understanding together; we picked on each other at the playground and the bus stop; we got stronger together playing basketball with each other year after year; we called each other on the phone, ran the streets, and drove each other's parents crazy running up in their houses when they were too nice to run us back out. Heck, these cats even know my baby sister! Now we got a lil fur on our faces and a lil responsibility, and we act like we can't even be cool anymore? Never that... not from me.

I was at my aunt's house just yesterday, reflecting on the neighborhood with her, enjoying the breeze. I thought about a young lady I once saw through the trees behind the house across the street. She was on a swing, wearing a sun dress, long hair, fair skin, beautiful shape. And I said to my aunt, "I wish everybody could move back to the neighborhood for just one day so we could just kick it the way we used to." And then the funniest thing happened...

An old blue-and-silver truck rolled by, and I couldn't even tell who it was, but somebody leaned out the passenger window and yelled, "MATTHEW!" I'm surprised he even recognized me with my Afro and all, lol. Or maybe he just remembered the house for the times we spent there, and maybe that was enough for him to recognize me. Either way, I'm gonna find out who it was next time I fall through. I don't care if all my old friends go to war with each other toNIGHT: I will never forget how close we were before this age. And when they see me, and every time they see me, I'm gonna be that same cat they always knew.

I Don't Wanna Grow Up... B-J