Defining Nineteen

For some time, I've had stereotypes of what people are like at different ages... now, granted, the stereotypes is just a tool until you really know them, but stiill, it is useful at least in separating things that define people from each other, so we can look at them. Still, each year to me has a stereotype, at least as high as twenty-two, with one exception.

Nineteen.

I say this, because, in less than seventy-two hours, I will be nineteen; that's it, at 07:18 MST, on October the 4^th, in the Julian year 2000. For those of you, who, like me, prefer other dates, that's just before sunrise, twenty-seven days before Samhain, in my second Autumn in Corvallis.

Anyway... what I feel for each number.

• Birth. Life, hopefully, always with in earshot of your parent.

1

• Speech, noise

2

• Sentences, walking

3

• Temper, self-awareness

4

• Fine motor skills, learning, inquiry, beginnings of written language, perhaps

5

• Building, learning, sharing, helping, trying to be adult for the first times.

6

• Red india rubber balls, our parents wonder at least a bit about formal education. Social interaction ou tside the home.

7

• Finding a 'path', perhaps. Exploring, doing what you do best.

8

• More of the same, I suppose.

9

• Becoming adult again, trying to help, trying to communicate with adults on tehir own level.

10

• Lots of time with friends... walks alone outside your house, perhaps. Depends on your environ a lot, I'd suppose.

11

• Making friends, and perhaps enemies. Thinking a lot, or at least being able to.

12

• Almost a teen. Society peers in at you. You can legally stay home alone, should your parents let you.

13

• Teenager, oh, my, we had better fear you now.

14

• Fourteen... a job, maybe? Not a big one... A first kis? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?

15

• You don't have boyfriend yet? Girlfriend? What's wrong with you? Maybe after you can drive, you can get one...

16

• You can drive. Now we actually have a reason to fear you...

17

• Seventeen. You're responsible, now, aren't you? You can go places, see people, and yet, there's always home to come back to. Now, if only it had happened sooner...

18

• Eighteen... the word itself almost means adult. You can move out. College? Graduation? Coming of age at least some way. Job, definately... Make life plans. Go try to do something big..

19

• What is with nineteen?

20

• Okay, you've had a couple years now...why haven't you done any of those 'big things' yet? Oh, no money... what about tha job? Oh, I see... rent. Oh, well.

21

• Goody, you can drink legally. Now maybe you can bar-hop and find that girlfriend... or at least drown out the fact that the 'big things' aren't coming for a while...

22

• Okay, okay, I get itm you're an adult. In fact, everyone gets it and expects you to act like one... at least in sharing the blame for everything. They still don't think you know anything...

So, you see, what is with Nineteen> More than that, really, we should create what nineteen should be. What should we think about at nineteen? What do you how to be doing then? What was with nineteen, for those of you who've done it already?

	Love you all,  ponder lots,

		Aredridel

• In reference to creating nineteen. Why not create what very year should be? Make the world what you want it to be. Do what you want to do, I don't mean self-indulgence, I think deep down that isn't what you want to do. And while you're making one year good you can carve out the next. Erek

• That is pretty much what I do, when I'm not too close to those silly birthdays. :) Rachel H, 02/07/02

I have no clue. I turned 19 on Sept. 25 th of this year. However, I didn't really think much of turning 18 either. Ya, the government says you're officially an adult. But, I didn't feel that way and I still don't. One also gets to vote. So this oncoming election will be the first time I will have the privilege to vote. It's actually interesting to hear from younger teen activists fighting for the chance to vote earlier. A year ago I didn't know there were teens fighting about age discrimination. I thought it was only occuring with older people. But, I think you're right soceity perpetuates certain ages in ones life as more important than the rest. 16-sweet 16, first privledge in becoming an adult is to drive. freedom. 18-official adult. can vote. 21-can drink but then after that you don't really get an age priviledge until you're 65 or older. Discounts on stuff. I don't know if that's really a privledge though. I think I'm not making a very good point. But, I hope you read this. I would love to hear your response.

Cybil Schroder cybil_s at pacbell.net

Afraid I can't comment specifically about nineteen, being only sixteen and having really no idea what's in store (expectations, of course, are another matter..), but in America you're really only fully an adult at age 35, aren't you? No one younger than 35 can run for president. - Emma

• Thats only so they can be sure the president is mature and has experiance with thins or something. Take it from me. I'm american. 18 is legally adult. -Rae
• Of course, look at who's President now. *cough* I'm American, too. - Emma
• I second that, Emma. -Jekissa
• Yeah, what does age matter with our president now? Ehk-hem. Wel, no more said on that. I do think it's kind of weird that although age 18 is considered such a big thing, there are still quite a few other landmarks to pass before it seems (to me) as if one is YET considered a "true" American a-dolt. I.e., age 21 before you can legally drink, age 25 before some kinds of certain car insurance things are removed, or before one can rent a car (I heard an ironic story from one of our local midwest car-rental places from the a woman who did desk work/helped run the place, but actually couldn't rent a car by HERSELF when she was travelliing in FLorida that winter and her car broke down, because she was still in her early 20's! Aug!), and then of course things like the President age. I dunno. It's odd. Rachel H. 02/07/02

Well, I'm seventeen (ACK!), but if I were to define nineteen it would be as follows: the last year of being a teenager, the second year of being adult (arbitrarily anyway), purgatory (hehehe), a time to prepare for those Big Things (maybe even do a few), a year to get over the shock of being "adult" (if one ever does. hopefully not "adolt"). Dream, party, feel, wander, be crazy and unstable when you can still maybe get away with it. (Oh, that year spent freight train hopping and cycling across the country living off marshmallows? That was just youthful indiscretion.) More importantly, it's your nineteenth year of being alive. As for the age stereotyping (which I admit to doing) I find it more and more inaccurate as I go along. I think we should have words for people that are irrelevant to age. I know "children" that act like no such connotation and "adults" that don't either. In truth, I think it's silly to chop people up into stages and use some peoples experiences to define all people, as if we all didn't grow and change at different rates even within our own lives, as if we are somehow an incomplete person because we aren't this age or that age. Life is a continuing, sometimes flowing, sometimes struggling, process of experiences, information, and relationships that cannot truly be defined at some randomly selected point by the dictates of date or law. So even though I can say what nineteen (or seventeen) is to society or to me, you shouldn't really let that definition (or lack thereof) rule you. - KimW. (who probably contradicts herself, but doesn't care)

My sister and I have this tradition of giving each other a list of questions on our birthdays. I started it several years ago, and the list has evolved to include questions like:

• What does the number (18)mean to you?
• What color does it represent?
• What sound/song?
• What do you remember from the past year?
• What are the things you regret?
• What will you do to prevent those things from happening this year? *What are your favorite memories/experiences from the past year?
• What do you hope for, and what do you plan to do, in the coming year?
• What does the number 19 mean to you, and how is it represented?

This discussion intrigued me, because this is something I've been thinking about for awhile now...whether or not the age that I am, in years, should affect me. Do I have a choice in how it affects me? I think so....I'm about six months into my 20^th year now,so I guess I'm speaking from the other side of 19. I think it's a cool age. It was a good year for me, over all. I graduated from massage school, got my massage therapy license,went to Baja, Joshua Tree, Europe...bought a bike (half barter, half money earned doing massage) and a car, met some personal goals, had alot of fun and some very hard times, and definetly learned alot. One thing I did while I was 19 was date a 31 year old man. I had several people telling me "age doesn't/shouldn't matter" and I tried out that belief for a while. I've decided that it does matter, to me. But before I realized that, I had to figure out exactly how mature I am, anyway. And accept that level of maturity, without trying to be more mature, or compromise myself, acting less mature than I am simply because many other people my age act that way. Actually I think mature is the wrong word. Responsible is better, because I can think of several people right off-hand who are younger than me and equally as mature. Maybe more so.Savor your last year of being a teenager. I don't particularly care for the term teenager, (which I think was coined back in the 30s or 40s...I have an article at home I'll have to look up)but enjoy the good parts of the stereotype. Not that I care for the stereotype either. Yeah, celebrate your 19^th year of being alive. It's grand. Hannah

Eighteen. Didn't think I'd make it this far. May I make the next year to bring joy, chaos, adoration, God, solutions, problems, and lots and lots of risks. ~Wind

19 feels very inbetween everything else. 18 is being an *adult* for the first time, and being 20 is being a *not teenager* for the first time, but 19 is mostly waiting and seeing and trying to find where i belong. Dawn

Don't think I'll ever make it to be that ancient, you guys...If I ever do I'll tell you how it feels. TheMysteryPoster

Arianna smirks

but are pretending not to be kids anymore

just a bit worse than the firends I'm having trouble dealing with.

I'm 19. For me, it's been all about figuring out how I function on my own. I moved into my first apartment with my boyfriend at 18..... 19 has been a wonderful, scary chance to see what I'm like when I don't see my family every day. And what it's like to wake up every morning in MY house, thinking about things like getting the laundry done and cooking dinner and paying the gas bill..... Who am I exactly away from my family? Away from that constant security...?

-Mel(Other)

I would love to try to define 19. That is to say I don't think I quite have yet and I'm going to turn 19 in three months. I hate birthdays to begin with; I hate all change and having to redefine myself, and I have a hard time not trying to be the "best" of any certain stage in my life or age. I tried to make the most out of 16, felt as if I had to be perfect at it, because 16 is such a lauded age here; hoped I was doing 18 right all this year. So, yeah. I also can't believe I'm about to enter into my last teen year! When I turned 13 the teen years seemed so incredibally endless, all 7 of them. And it's bene the longest single declared stage of my life that I can remember, really. I don't want to leave it so soon! Please tell me, all you 20 and older people that you still have fun and have fun with eachother and that you haven't changed in some weird boring way. I've never even met any of you cmap unschoolers yet. Are we all going o grow up and not want to get together for wacky crazy fun gatherings any more? I also just read some silly thing about how one's brain stops developing the same way after 20. Not very helpful. I don't consider the functions of the teen brain to be bad in any way, so I wwould like to be able to continue with them forever.... (And how'd they manage to get it to line up so smoothly with the ages like that anyway, huh?) It actually almost seems to me right now like 19 is younger than 18. I find myself thinking that I've already been 19. 18 is so glorified and people act like you're completely grown up ("Should be out on your own now, shouldn't you?" "Why? I wasn't last week...."), and so what is 19? You're just a plain old teen again? That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, let's define 19.... Rachel H, 02/07/02

P.S. Feeling like it's unique and something to savor won't help because then I'll only try to do it perfectly and feel like I can probably only fail. This is all sort of weird because I'm a person with quite a lot of self-esteem. The inbetween months when I'm nicely ensconsed wihtin an age are fine, it's just when another birthday is sneeking up on me or is just past me that I get funnny about it. Ta ta....*