Response to Prompt #14

Becoming an adult is a very hard, exciting, and a confusing thing to a 14 year old kid.  To a kid, becoming an adult is ages away, a time that will never come.  A time of responsibilities, hardships, and having no fun.  Adults are the people that make the rules, that make you come home for dinner when you really just want to stay out with your friends.  They are the people that watch over you and the people that are always looking down on you.  A 14 year old kid never wants grow old and have to have responsibilities and obey they rules, but they know they eventually have to be.  And because kids know they eventually have to grow up, they have many questions and concerns about growing up.  I myself, are included in this catagory.

One question that I have about being an adult and growing up is, why?  Why do you have to grow up?  Why can't we all just stay as kids and play out in the park till we get to tired to move?  Some people will say because "you have to grow up eventually, you can't stay young and immature forever, so grow up" others will say "you can't expect your parents to take care of you your entire life so you have to grow up".  The first one I really don't understand, why can't a be an immature 40 year old man, huh?  Why is it that growing up is always related to becoming less immature and less innocent and becoming more responsible.   The second reason I see the reasoning in, I understand the fact that we can't have our parents always there looking out for us.  I understand the fact that you can't live with your parents until you grow old and dies.  But even if you do move out, even if you move on into the "real world" and start a career for yourself, you're expected to act as an adult and not as a child.  I don't understand why a grown man can't act as if he would if he were still in middle school.

This is why I am concerned about growing up, because I don't really know what that means.  What growing up means I can do and what it means I can't do.  I hate the fact that people expect me to grow up and stop acting childish and immature.  I want to stay this way and fun for the rest of my life!  This is just how i feel now, though.  Maybe in a few years or when I'm all grown up I'll think of it differently, but for now, I'm just going to enjoy being a kid.