Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery (e-text)
CHAPTER XXX "The Queens Class Is Organized"
"[...] Diana and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn't becoming to talk of childish matters. It's such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to us about it. She said we couldn't be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn, Marilla. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly developed. It's perfectly appalling to think of being twenty, Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. [...]"
Anne of the Island, by L.M. Montgomery (e-text)
Chapter XIX "An Interlude"
"To think that this is my twentieth birthday, and that I've left my teens behind me forever," said Anne, who was curled up on the hearth-rug with Rusty in her lap, to Aunt Jamesina who was reading in her pet chair. They were alone in the living room. Stella and Priscilla had gone to a committee meeting and Phil was upstairs adorning herself for a party.
"I suppose you feel kind of, sorry" said Aunt Jamesina. "The teens are such a nice part of life. I'm glad I've never gone out of them myself."
Anne laughed.
"You never will, Aunty. You'll be eighteen when you should be a hundred. Yes, I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws."
"So's everybody's," said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. "Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line. Don't worry over it, Anne. Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good time. That's my philosophy and it's always worked pretty well...."
Twenty, another milestone in life. Looking back, there's the first birthday. Then the fifth and kindergarten. Then the double digits: 10! Then the teen years: 13. Soon after, sweet 16 and legal 18. Now I've reached 20, my life measured in two decades. A little surreal. In just a year 21, fully legal. Still surreal. My cousin's right, time seems to go by faster when you're older. I remember those years but not vividly.
Now I'm twenty. My teen years are officially gone, and so is the carefree fun! I still feel like a kid, a giddy teenager. I guess I'll never grow up, or at least feel grown up. You could say I have the Peter Pan syndrome. (Hey, I'm like Tinkerbell, a Peter Pan groupie!) My foundation is laid and set in one direction (unless I'm a seesaw, always teetering) but still really flawed. I don't know where my life's headed right now, except for school and studies right now, like the past fifteen years of my life. I feel like Anne and will take Aunt Jamesina's advice as well. ("Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good time.") Well, let's see where God and life take me and what's around that "bend in the road."
I'm twenty. Summer 2003, the final summer of my childhood, the end of my crazy and "impossible" teenage years.
Faith MCR, July 30, 2003