Peter Pan

Its Saturday morning at my grandma's house. She only has probably five or six movies for children, but her version of Peter Pan the musical is the newest so we're watching that again. Mary Martin is bouncing through the woods singing while the lost boys echo her. Issac is on the couch near me singing and dancing along.

"I won't grow up!"

("I won't grow up!")

"I don't want to wear a tie,"

("I don't want to wear a tie,")

"Or a serious expression,"

(Or a serious expression,")

"In the middle of July."

("In the middle of July.")

"And if it means I must prepare,
To shoulder burdens with a worried air,
I'll never grow up,
Never grow up,
Never grow uuuuup..."

I was extremely young at that time and decided that day that I would never grow up either. I was completely determined.

Our parents were painting the house and so my brother and I were sharing the guest bedroom for the time being. As my mother tucked us in I explained to her that I would be leaving to go live with Peter Pan in a few years. I needed to wait a few years so I could always be a cool older kid and able to use tools and know enough to be really useful in Neverland, but I did need to go even though I would miss everybody very much.

"I see," my mother said, "and when will you go?"

"When I'm 13 I'll prop the window open with a stick and Peter Pan will know it is time for me to leave." I said. 13 seemed unimaginably old at that time, and it was about the age some of the older lost boys were to my knowledge. Thinking on it for a moment I asked, "When do children become adults?"

"When they turn 18."

"Ah, so I'll go right before then I guess."

The next day I selected an appropriate stick from the yard to hold the window open and brought it inside. No use in not being prepared and all.

I thought vaguely of my intentions once when I was 13 and again when I turned 16 and laughed on both occasions. On the eve of my 18th birthday I looked out the window to see a fallen tree branch in my yard. The whole question was framed a little differently in my mind then, as the thought of running away from home was never too far from the horizon.

***

At 14 we can work, at 16 we can drive. At 17 we can see R rated movies. At 18 we can smoke, buy porn, sign papers, vote, and die for our country. At 21 we can toast its victory. At 25 car rentals and many forms of insurance begin treating you as an adult, and at 35 you can run for president. When are we grown up?

***

"So," the same grandma asked, "You're 10 today, a whole two digits! How do you feel?"

My grandma asked me this question every year she saw me for my birthday. The answer was always the same.

"Erm...about the same as I did yesterday."

When I was young this statement made me nervous. Birthdays were suppose to be days of change, but I never felt my growth or maturity was so cleanly marked by the strict regiment of the Gregorian calendar. To be honest, I'm not totally sure it does now either.

***

The train leads to a monorail to a plane to a subway and up an escalator to a bus platform where Ginger is waiting for me. He looks different, even only after not seeing him for five months, in a way I can not quite put my finger on. I think I have changed too.

I hold our spot in line for the bus while he goes to get water. He returns and hands me mine.

"How much do I owe you for this?" In undergrad this was an important question.

Ginger shrugs, "Forget it, we're both adults with jobs, a few dollars between friends does not matter."

The eagerness to catch up spills right into the line for the bus and before I know it we're gathering stares and glares as I joke with Ginger about being homeless and the various other adventures which have filled the past 5 months.

***

In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them. ... I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.

The Little Prince Chapter 1 by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

***

"Did I ever tell you," I'm still laughing with Ginger, "about the time a policeman tried to throw me out of a tree for supposedly being drunk?"

The man in front of us and the man in front of him are increasingly gaining credibility with one another by taking turns glaring at us less and less subtly.

The bus engine shudders on, and all of our faces snap to look at it. A young man dressed in green is painted on the side above the bus logo of "Peter Pan." I grin and the lyrics from the television set in my grandmother's house so long ago echo back to me

If growing up means it would be
Beneath my dignity to climb a tree
I'll never grow up
Never grow up...

I suppose I found how to live in Neverland after all.

The outside world can keep its matters of consequence.