This summer I turned 20, which was pretty devastating to me. Dropping the ‘teen’ at the end of my age signalled something that I had feared since I was a child. I was growing up.
When I was younger Peter Pan was one of my most watched movies. Peter Pan had it sorted. I wish I could run away to Never Never Land, chill out at the mermaid lagoon and never have to grow up and think about real worldly issues.
Standing atop Big Ben and aiming for the second star on the right and on ‘til morning just doesn’t seem like an option anymore; a young Sinead would slap me if she heard me speak like this. Sorry younger me, but you had fun while you lasted.
No, I didn’t have an adolescence straight out of a Josh Schwarz drama show; there was no murder, no pregnancy, no drug addictions or sex tapes, no beautiful and misunderstood juvenile delinquent to take into your home and most depressingly of all, there was no Seth Cohen look-alike standing on a coffee cart declaring his love for me, though there’s still time for that one.
While the thought of entering my 20’s sucked at the beginning, this summer was the best of my life so far. I moved to Boston with two of my friends and we ended up living with four American students and having an incredible J1. Total success story. I won’t bore you with all the details; it was your average J1, though the highlight has to be skydiving in Cape Cod. I don’t really know why we did it, but I do know it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
When we arrived at the airfield (of course they had songs like ‘Learning to Fly’ by the Foo Fighters and ‘Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty playing on a loop), literally signed our lives away several times, put our harnesses on and waited for the plane to come to take us up, the mixture of nerves and excitement was one I’d never felt to such an extent, before the door opened and we had to jump out that is. The feeling of free-falling at 10,000 feet in the air is just indescribable so I won’t even try. As soon as it was over I wanted to go again.
It was such an incredible summer and it took some getting used to when we arrived home in Ireland and were living with family again. Being home is great but I’d go back to Boston in a heartbeat.
Being in America though at 20 made me feel like I was 17 again. Not being able to buy my own alcohol after 2 years of being allowed at home was mad. I felt so young; so really being 20 in Ireland isn’t that bad after all.
Growing up in general does suck though, the thoughts of being in my final year of college has literally sent shivers down my spine. I don’t think I have a thesis in me and I am most certainly not ready for the real world. Supporting myself financially? It’s the stuff horror movies are made of. Really nongory and PG horror movies… MY kind of horror movie.
I tried in vain to watch The Fourth Kind over summer, I lasted a whole ten minutes before it got too much. I do scare ridiculously easily but it took around four episodes of the Inbetweeners before I was fit to walk up the dark stairs to bed. It’s not that I’m afraid of the dark or anything…I just hate how you don’t know what’s in the shadows. Like anything could be lurking there. It doesn’t help that I’m writing this in my dark bedroom at 1am and my laptop battery is about to die. One thing I can do with great expertise is freak the crap out of myself. I’m actually going to move this article on before I lose all ability to get to sleep tonight! My own imagination is definitely my worst enemy at times.
Back to the topic of Disney movies (always safe to think about before bed) though, I cannot wait for The Lion King in 3D to come out in October. I remember going to see it in the cinema the first time around, if I remember correctly it was the first film I ever saw in the cinema. I think a lot of you will agree with me on this one but I don’t think I ever fully got over Mufasa’s death. Sorry if I ruined the film on any of you deprived children out there who have yet to see it.
I don’t care for the whole 3D thing but I will definitely be going nonetheless. My love of Disney, and The Lion King in particular, is just too strong to keep me away. I don’t know what my childhood would have been without Disney. It taught me some real life lessons; how to pick a prickly pear without getting stung, that everybody wants to be a cat because a cats the only cat who knows where its at, the seaweed’s always greener in somebody else’s lake and much MUCH more.
I remember as a child getting my mom to read the book of The Little Mermaid to me so many times I knew all the words off by heart. I then convinced my aunt I was able to read because I knew it so well and when the page turns came. She thought I was some kind of prodigy… sadly I was just obsessive with a great memory.
I look at children’s TV these days and we really got the best of it; some of the crap these kids watch has just reached the ridiculous. The 90s were the best. End of.
Sinead Brennan
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