“My mother says you know when your childhood ends. It’s the moment you stop being happy, and start remembering when you used to be.”
The first time I read Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, this statement (which is a paraphrase of the actual script) hit me like a tone of bricks.
By this definition, the last day of my childhood was March 17, 1986.
I was in the fourth grade, and my family had just moved from a very small town in southern Indiana to a very large suburb of Washington, D.C. Culture shock – obviously. Moving in the middle of the school year – horrible. But the real trauma for me was the sudden, complete, visceral understanding of what it meant when something changed irrevocably.
You see, my parents had done an outstanding job of selling me on this move. They touted the opportunities I would have, the places I’d go, the things I’d learn, the friends I’d make – it was going to be a great adventure. We would leave this one-horse town behind and live somewhere Big and Real and Important. A Place where Things Happened.
It wasn’t until I was sitting in my new classroom, looking at a sea of unfamiliar faces all sneaking sideways glances at me, wondering why the blackboard was green, why they had tables instead of desks, and why the advanced reading group was using the book I had finished last year that it hit me: this is it. This is what my life will be now. Everything was unfamiliar. I kept discovering that things I didn’t realize I took for granted were all different and unexpected – like having the rug pulled out from under you when you thought you were standing on the linoleum.
And so, on March 17, 1986, I looked around the classroom, I looked down at my spelling list, and I wept. I cried for all of the things in Indiana that I’d lost but didn’t know I was losing. I cried because I didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. I cried because I wanted to go home, but I knew I couldn’t.
Today, March 14, 2008, nearly 22 years later, I look around my little temp office on Michigan Avenue, I look out the window, and I cry just a little. For the nine-year-old who didn’t know what hit her.
So, my friends: how you you mark the end of your childhood? Did you know it was happening when it happened? Was it exciting, or sad, or scary? Tell me.
