Pale Yellow Light

There is something breathtaking about my adolescence. It isn't getting kicked out of high school. It isn't the teen pregnancies. It isn't the drug issues, violence, or vandalism. It's the pale yellow light spread out across a parking lot, in the depth of summer reflected off the pine trees. It is a scene repeated in thousands of small towns all across the country, world, and who knows where else. For anyone who has lived it, and has the intelligence to see it, it is the single most beautiful thing conceivable. For tourists, townies, and lucky passer-by's, it is the reason to step outside at night.

The dim glow of serenity.

The warmth of summer camps, communities, girls that smoke, and mischief.

The realization that the world is unending, ever-changing, dangerous, and beautiful. That I am no longer a child, I am a person. I want to explore places unknown. Lose my virginity to the girl next door. I want to smoke like the cool kids. Grow up fast, and never grow up. I want it to always be night, always be mysterious, always be new.

I want to never realize what I know now.

But it ends. It ends much sooner than it should. Suddenly, adulthood.

Here is where I wonder. These years. These few, beautiful, short years. Are they worth the price we all pay with age? Do we look back on them fondly? Do we look back on them and remember their beauty, even as we drown in debt, and failure, and life? Do we think to ourselves of the days when we were free and say "for just one more of those days, I would spend another lifetime as an adult"?

Would I? Absolutely.

That pale yellow light flat against the concrete. Those thick walls of pine, and the mysteries beyond them. Sexy, tempting, and devilish. Yes. Oh, yes I would.