Weekend nights with you must be spent drinking- if not drinking then inhaling some other form of emotion-enhancing drug because you, Eighteen, have been branded the labels of “wild” and “free.”

But in the day? Why then, Eighteen, must you be so proper? Burying yourself in books, reading, writing, solving, creating, hoping to make a name for yourself because the title of “adulthood” has been stamped onto your post-pubescent chest.

Eighteen, much time with you is spent staring into half-vacant eyes, chatting about how today’s rain will make traffic slow, because eighteen means to list your acquaintances by the hundreds, or as the businesses world calls it, “networking.”

Eighteen, you are a strain on the eyes because to be you is to
watch our looks, watch our words, watch the way we dress,
watch how much food there is on our plate, and when we are asleep? Watch how long we are asleep because tomorrow you are full of appointments, exams, and errands, and so we live with you in perpetual “insomnia.”

You, Eighteen, are Nineteen also because all that time
that is not spent otherwise is spent on thoughts of what comes next,“planning” a suitable, likeable career with an attractive other, thinking of our one-day children who too will grow up to be you, Eighteen.

Ah, dearest Eighteen! They tell us that to be you is to be independent, beautiful, strong, successful, and carefree.
To be you is to be productive, happy. To be you is to laugh, to fight, to love. To be you is to “live”!

But, Eighteen, what they don’t tell us is that to be you is to be one step behind everything that you pretend to be.