My Greed

I once heard somewhere that growing up means discarding your childhood dreams, one hopeless fantasy at a time. I suppose in the end you're left there standing dreamless, trapped, and shattered; that's when you can proclaim, "I'm grown!" Recently, the potential of this reality has hit me and it stings like nothing I've ever felt. For me, the most glorious thing about having an age in the single digits was the limitless identities and possibilities it subsumed.

At the early age of six I was a ninja, an astronaut, an artist, a musician, a soldier, a farmer, a scientist, a poultry rancher, and (of course) a superhero. Where did all those little versions of me go? Disappeared into the great abyss of adulthood and sound decision-making. And what if I'm just not ready to fucking let any of them go? The responsibility militia will break down my doors and drag them away like so many uncharged enemy combatants with little to no chance for a fair trial. Right now they're at my doors (the militia, not the combatants), demanding I hand over the mathematician, the economist, the computer scientist, the researcher, or the technical analyst. They don't care which one, as long as he'll scream in defiance as he's being dragged away.