American Man or Child?

I am obsessed with the idea of growing up and either leaving it behind or clinging to it for the rest of your life such as a security blanket that children attach themselves to for comfort and safety. When I read the paragraph explaining the pizzeria, I noticed Orlean wrote about small details such as when Colin states, “‘Next Game”’ and then the “teenagers ignore[] him” which seemed real enough for a ten year old boy to get aggravated about (Orlean). Because of these teenagers that ignore him and bully him into thinking he is worth nothing in their eyes, Colin learns how to get his way, sees potential in the act and goes on to follow in the footsteps and “elbowed [the younger children] aside” as soon as the teenagers left (Orlean). This automatically shows the beginning of a teenager and his ways of acting cooler than the smaller kids. This small step towards young adult hood startled me because adulthood does not just happen in a day and I never saw my own steps of becoming a teenager, so seeing something like that in Orlean’s writing brings out a kind of sad unawareness.

Even the way Colin and Japeth talk about girls, act around girls, grows into a drawn out concept later on in life. They bully the girls by calling them names like”Maggot” and “Diarrhea” to get their attention (Orlean). They find girls to be “about as unpopular as a piece of dirt” and reading about ten year old boys that think that way trigger memories on how men treat women today (Orlean). How they got the idea in their heads beats me, but seeing it happen so quietly seems crazy. 

Capturing these details, Orlean found the essence of being a child and slowly maturing, or not, into young men and the making of men from a young age. This profile is astounding to read and brilliant to silently watch the children grow little by little, where as no one sees the growth of themselves because worrying about how the future will look like, for now, never crosses our minds until the growth has already receded.