Adult Kids

Have you noticed an army of adult kids marching past you trampling on what you once thought was norms and values? 

I’ve seen them. They’re tiny in a few ways but are so mature in a myriad of others.

They talk like your spicy Aunt Verna but look like your cousin Sher Sher. The words that they use boldly in the streets, you still whisper behind your hands in public places. They shout barely veiled innuendoes to each other across the street, laughing loudly and threatening the meek with their barbaric expressions.

They dress in ways you never would, and shake themselves silly with each step. Their clothes have been carefully selected to give the most grown up effect; highlighting what can hardly be downplayed anyway. Shoving in your face what you couldn’t have missed even if you had one half-blind eye.

They have no concern for how they look except that they look “old enough.”

They are everywhere you are even when you regret spending your hard-earned cash on mindless entertainment at ungodly hours. You leave, they stay.

They know everything you didn’t at their age; things you would still blush to learn at your age now. They are not ashamed of the dirty looks thrown their way by adults and welcome any opportunity to put naysayers very firmly in their places.

But they’re thirteen, fourteen and fifteen.

When you come to learn this, your jaw drops and you can’t help but stare...furtively of course.

These grown ‘women’ go to school?! Yep, they still have trouble with long division and are too young to sign contracts on their own behalf.

What the hell happened to these kids?

They have skipped over childhood and were forced into adulthood – every nook and cranny of it.

How did that happen you ask?

I have a few theories:

     1.   Adult women, who should have known better, let them sit in on conversations that they were years away from understanding.

Grown people failed to differentiate between adult conversation and child-friendly ones. To the detriment of the next generation, adults openly discussed the private life of their children’s teachers or neighbourhood gossip, or even their own private business in the hearing of those children. That was where those children stopped respecting adults and found the courage to answer back when they’re being reprimanded. It even happens to you when you learn something about someone you respect; you can’t even help it much less these impressionable kids.

     2.   Adult men, who ought to be locked up, showed no demarcation between willingness and innocence.

These men once operated from the shadows but these days there is no need, for every community member keeps his not-so-secret secret. Some of these grown men with children older than those girls with whom they cavort claim not to have known enough to determine the child’s age, the gall! When a child opens her mouth, no matter how she looks or acts, you hear a child. Even worse, some of these shameless men know exactly how much trouble they’re getting into but stand on their soapboxes claiming that this child got exactly what she was looking for. I could go on (and infinitely so) on this point but I fear my real and inhumane feelings will show.

      3.   They get away with it. You let them.

You know it starts somewhere. There exists a point where this foul behaviour can stop or be stopped and real adults stop it. Too many are having too much fun being amused by it, though. The community that once raised children have become self-aware and now fear reproof. You see it and shake your head sadly. It’s not your child you say as you meander on.

At home, it started with one smart remark here and one sashay there and by the time you can blink your selectively-vigilant eyes you have failed your own daughter.

So where does that leave us as a society? Where does that leave future generations? 

How many adult kids does it take to form the next intelligent generation? We may never know; they skipped out of class and now they can’t read.