When I was a little kid, a tennis instructor once said that watching my forehand was like watching evolution. As a chronic late bloomer, the whole path to adulthood has been a bit like that-slow, awkward and peppered here and there with breakthroughs of personal growth. This past weekend I continued a strange growth passage.
This particular rite started this summer. My parents wanted me to move out of my bedroom so that my room could be turned into a den. My new room would be the one that each of my older brothers inhabited before moving out. Its location is advantageous because it can be accessed without passing by my parents' room, which is nice, since I come in late sometimes and my mother already sleeps less than most amphetamine addicts.
So I agreed to move out of the first bedroom I ever called my own. Naturally, I saved almost all of the moving until the night before I left for Madison at the end of August. I stayed up all night moving my furniture, sifting through my old clothes and poring over the toys and books of my childhood to which I was about to bid farewell forever. I dare any of you to top the melodrama of me sitting in my closet, listening to \Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"" by Elton John, and playing with my Lego gas station one last time.
Of course, pulling an all-nighter my last night home meant that I had never slept in my new room until I flew home to New York this past weekend. The whole weekend was jarring. After seeing what was missing, what was rearranged and what just didn't feel right, it was difficult to call my new room home and even more difficult to sleep.
Now that I'm back, I can't shake the feeling that my eventual adult life in New York will be more like the life I lead now in Madison than the one I once led at home. This past weekend gave me new perspective on what a different life I have grown into. I no longer scrutinize the backs of the baseball cards that fill my closet. Now I read the Baseball Prospectus. I no longer play with my little toy police boat in the bathtub. Now I live in a building where the police come to bust up parties where I have been drinking. I no longer write short stories simply because I have a story in my head. Now I write papers and columns and hope that professors and Cardinal readers find them acceptable.
Many times in my life, I've expected to suddenly feel an enormous change in who or where I am. I always thought it was supposed to happen after my bar mitzvah or on my first day of college. It wasn't supposed to occur in gradual retrospect merely after sleeping in a different room. I'll probably go through a lot of moves in my life. Eventually, I hope one of them will involve graduating and moving out of my parents' place. And I hope that even the ones as uncomfortable as this will always leave me still on my feet. But mostly, I hope that no move will ever make me throw away my Lego pirate ship.
amosap@hotmail.com.
