Growing Up
2005-01-09 - 1:28 p.m.

When I was ten, I had a pair of jeans I liked very much. They were Levis, blue with gold stitching, and they had pockets everywhere. Not only were they stylish, but they were durable. In the year and a half that I owned them, they survived quite a bit: a fall into a puddle, a drag across the gravel, about thirteen bicycle wrecks, and almost everything else a boy could throw at them. They had survived with barely a scuff.

I remember that year, 1995. The winter was cold, and the summer got hot early. When my mom was certain it was seasonal enough, I was back in my old jeans. The first half of the summer passed in a breeze, and then it was July 1st, my birthday. After the cake was eaten and the grownups had settled into their dull, adult murmur, I opened my gifts. There was the usual assortment of cheap trifles from the blue-haired women who barely knew me, a big gift from my parents (which I now cannot recall), and a new pair of jeans. They were a lighter blue, and had white stitching, and I hated them. Nothing was said, but I silently swore I would never wear them.

Months passed, and I was still growing, and my jeans were not. I wore them proudly as long as I could, but one day in late September, Mom laid down the law, and that was that.

I put on the new jeans with no small degree of trepidation, and was surprised to find that they fit perfectly. After that day, I never thought about it again. More years, more clothes, more growing, and I never gave another thought to my old Levi's, until tonight.

My old friend, we've shared ups and downs. Our ages have moved from one digit to two, but as their numbers have grown, our similarities have decreased in proportion. Where once we would ride our bikes and build our castles, we now drive our cars and pay our rent. We used to discuss the minutiae of Saturday morning cartoons, but now there's just nothing to talk about. We can talk, but we can't relate, and we can pretend, but we can't be sincere. We're both afraid to tell the truth, because theses days, we can't read each other's minds. Our thoughts go further than our backyards, and my dreams go further than this town.

We have gone separate ways, taking different paths that sometimes cross but more frequently diverge, and with every divergence, there is less of a chance that they will ever meet again.

So like the jeans I once loved and have now forgotten, I must confess that we no longer fit each other. We can still ride together, we can still discuss the weather, but if this is all you'll ever be, our roads will not cross indefinitely.

Let's enjoy these times as they slip away.