4 - Sunday, October 25, 1987 - North Shore News

“GROWING UP”’ is a theme a male returns to again and

Ob Hunter
@ strictly personal ®

again, like a bull moose rubbing a broken antler against a

tree, philosophically speaking.

It is something he is tricked into
doing virtually all of his life, if
he’s not careful.

You'll notice how, in popular
language, women are cither
grown-up or they’re not, but men
are always growing up.

Later in life, they are ‘‘finally”
growing up, or they ‘‘look like
they might be showing signs’? of
finally growing up.

There is skulduggery here, men.
We have been shamelessly manipu-
lated by our mothers, or some-
body, into thinking we are going to
grow up (unlike Dad), when the
truth is, nothing so dramatic is go-
ing to happen.

“Growing up’? was the great
theme of my childhood, as I recall.
I was constantly being advised that
sooner or later | would have to
‘grow up.””

If there was something par-
ticularly awful to have to do, like
spooning down homemade tomato
soup, it had to be done — you
guessed it! — because it was ‘part
of growing up.”

The really worst things, like
school, were an ‘‘important part’’
of growing up. Watch out!

I didn’t want to grow up. It
looked like a disaster to me. The
things I really liked doing, like

goofing off and reading comics, -

weren’t grown-up things to do,
apparently, even though everybody
admitted that reading was an im-
portant part of growing up, too.
When adults dragged themselves
bleary-eyed off to work or came
home, gaunt-eyed with exhaustion
and the humiliation of another day

Presented by Bob Warkentin

of being put down and abused by
One system or another, they were
being ‘‘grown-up’”’ in the extreme.

Hey! I was content to stay off in
the corner, playing cowboys and
Indians, building papier-mache
Martian war machines a Ja H.G.
Wells, collecting Weird Tales com-
ies, cutting out magazine figures to
wage war between good and bad
armies spread out on the floor.

When I was 12, the bad news
came. My uncle, who was acting as
a substitute father, ordered me to
put my cut-outs and toys and com-
ics away. It was — ta dum! —
“time to grow up!’’

1 remember my soul cringing.
Oh no, not already! I wasn’t
ready...

A lot of time passed between 12
and 21. As far as I can keep score,
I must have ‘‘grown up’? 10,000
times in that period, at least if you
equate growing with dying many
little deaths from embarrassment
and confusion and shame and
despair and shock as you shamble
towards citizenship in a modern
civilization.

Teenage-hood — good grief,
what an ordeal! The wonder, truly,
is that we get through adolescence.
A lot of growing, yes sir! Con-
densed into a very tight time-
frame..

But by 21, I think now, you ar-
rive back where you were when
you were 12, except that your body
has finally caught up with your
mind, Or vice versa.

For boys, anyway, the adoles-
cent years are lost ones, while flesh
and frontal lobes lose contact, then

The most important things for a young person to establish are

reputation and character.

-John D. Rockefelter

Never worry because the tide is going out. It always comes back.

e *

--Anonymous

*

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness or

when forgiving another.

+ 8

| All we can do is to make the best of each day.

x koe

-Jean Paul Richter

*

--Eddie Cantor

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attempt painfully to re-establish it.
Eech teen stage I went through,
whether it meant wearing drapes
and a sharkskin shirt or a James
Dean jacket and a Duck-Tail, was
a sign of me ‘‘growing.”’
Implicit in this, 1 realize now,

was the belief that growing meant
upward evolution toward the
ultimate exalted state of actually
“being grown up.”

I mean, what more derogatory
ierm is there to dismiss an intellec-
tual property than to call it ‘“‘ado-
lescent''?

It's a bad time to be a teenager,
kids. There are more old people
out here than ever, and we are
hard to dazzle. | know I wouldn't
want to be'a teenager now. But
then, I didn’t want to be a teenager
even — most especially — when |
was one.

Growth during the adolescence
period? Nah. Survival is the big
thing.

Maybe you do start to grow up
when you’re a young man, faced

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ylvan understands how tough it

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with family responsibilities, or
whatever forms of stress you have
taken on, but what happens after
that, I'm not so sure.

I'm inclined to think, on the
basis of what has happened to me,
my friends, family and colleagues
I've known along the way, is that
none of us has really changed a bit
since the first day we knew cach
other, no matter how long ago that
might have been.

The wear and tear on each
other’s head and hide is plain
enough for all 10 see. But in terms
of personalities, none of us
transformed into anything we
weren't already — from the very
beginning of our lives.

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© 1986 Sivan ntearning Corroration :

For 23 years the Lions Gate Medical
Research Foundation has been funding useful
and important medical research projects on
the North Shore by North Shore physicians
and health care workers!!

We are asking you to join us in these
worthwhile endeavours by
« making a tax-deductable donation of
$2, $10, $100, or whatever you can, &/or
* volunteering to donate some time, &/or
* becoming a member of the Foundation

More Information? Call Kathy Hunter
988-3131, local 201

f LIONS GATE MEDICAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION

Attention: Kathy Hunter ¢ c/o Lions Gate Hospital
15th Street at St. Georges, North Vancouver, B.C. V7L 2L7

I enclose my donation of $.............. Mail estate planning information? Cc]

Mail tax receipt? [[]

I enclose my membership fee: ANNUAL $10 [1] sENIor CITIZEN: $2

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