Sweet Sixteen

My birthday was months ago but I had written a really rough version of this the day after my birthday. It might not be the expirience many have when they are sixteen but maybe it is. Tell me what you think!

When I woke up on my sixteen birthday I did not feel any different, I did not look any different and I wasn't treated any different.

Honestly, it's the same every year, with each birthday it's hard to feel any different but I was sure that this year, sixteen, would be monumental.

Buit it wasn't. I was still unpopular, still socially awkward. I wasn't any prettier, still flat-chested, still gangly. I still had zits on my nose and frizzy hair.

Looking in the mirror, I didn't see the glamour that I was sure accompanied being sixteen. I didn't see the beautiful girls on TV, the girls that make grown men stop in their tracks only to curse them for being to young.

My dad drove me to school because even though I was sixteen I couldn't drive, I didn't have a car and I still had to go to school.

I still had to take tests and do homework. Suffer annoying classmates and boring teachers.

At the end of the day, even though it was my birthday, my friends still had places to go and things to do.

And even though it was my birthday, after school, my best friend and I were still hanging around my house, bored.

We eventually decided to go for a walk around my neighborhood and ended up arriving at the playground at my elementary school.

As we sat on top of the jungle gym, I looked around at the structure I used to play on, all those years ago. This is where we played house, I was always the baby. And this is the slide we used to race on. This is the ladder I was always to scared to climb up. These are the monkey bars we used to sit on top of or hang from our knees.

This school, this playground is my childhood and even though it's only been six years, so much has changed that it's hard to remember even being young enough to play here.

And that's when it hit me, being sixteen isn't about glamour. It isn't about the next two years being the best of my life or being the envy of everyone I know. Being sixteen is about marking the line between youth and adulthood. It's about moving forward, growing up, becoming an adult, entering the real world. But it's also about remembering your childhood, holding onto that innocence just a little longer, maybe never losing it completely. You are a teenager so you can have those years to transition, those years to mature and those years to remember.

Later that night I would have a family dinner, have a chocolate birthday cake, and unwrap my presents. My parents would tear up at their little baby getting so old, my brother wouldn't admit it but secretly be amazed at how old I was and I would smile. I was sixteen, smack dab in the middle of high school, no longer a kid, not yet am adult. A teenager, simple as that.

Tomorrow would be just another day, I had to go to school, do my homework, deal with friends. But I would be sixteen and that was okay with me.