Down, down baby. Down, down the roller coaster.

 

I am 34 years old. I have two children. My oldest is 11 and going into the 6^th grade. I have been married for 13 years. I own my home, I am a leader in my church, and I help run a successful business. Why do I still not feel grown up?

I think I have written about this in the past, but it was brought to light once again this weekend. I went to visit my grandparents. I always enjoy visiting with them. Their house is one of the few places that when it’s time to leave I don’t feel I’ve been there long enough.

Sunday they were talking about when my Dad was a kid. My grandmother told me that for them dinner was always white beans and potatoes. On Friday they got a treat and had sandwiches. Then she talked about her childhood. She said that they only hardly ever had meat. They had pork chops once a week. My granddad responded, “Tsch! Y’all were rich! We never had meat.” I sat there listening to my grandparents tell stories just as I have for 34 years. I loved it.

After the exchange above I said something like, “We don’t realize what a treat having meat with a meal was 25 or 30 years ago.” As I said it I was thinking how long ago that was. 25 years! That’s a quarter century. Life was way different then.

The next day I realized what I had said. Suddenly it hit me. 25 years ago I was 9 years old. That used to seem like such a long time ago. Now 25, even 30 years is less than the span of my life so far.

So why do I still feel like a kid? I love video games. Some of my favorite TV shows are still cartoons. If I see Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry on TV, I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and watch until it’s over. When I hear a plane fly over I scan the skies until I find it. Then I’ll watch it until it’s out of sight. If I don’t see it, I’m genuinely disappointed.

Maybe that all means I’m just young at heart, but it goes beyond that. I feel young and because of that I feel unqualified to do adult things. I don’t mean adult in the sense of R-rated movies, alcohol, or casino gambling. I mean the things normal adults do like running a business, owning a house, raising kids, being a husband. The list goes on.

The more I sit and think about this, the less I want to write. I don’t want to let too much of my crazy out. I guess, at least partly, it comes down to a self-confidence issue. And I definitely have issues in that department. (Whoa! Too much crazy!)

For the most part it is a persistent feeling that I am a terrified 9 year-old boy living in an adult world. We’ll call it Josh Baskin Syndrome. Shimmy, shimmy cocoa pop.