Ten Year Old Man

The paragraph that caught my attention in Susan Orlean’s “The American Man at Age 10” was where Susan brings attention to the fact that Colin has suffered loss, and often thinks about his future. This was a very eye opening paragraph for me because it made me think of what I worried about or aspired to as a ten year old. At first I thought I didn’t have any goals or plans for my future back then, but then I realized I was wrong; I simply forgot about them. As you grow up, you tend to forget the details that occupied your mind when you were younger. Things that seemed important at the time vanish, leaving only a vague collection of memories that may not be 100% accurate. Simply because we’ve forgotten of the mature thoughts we had when younger doesn’t mean that they didn’t happen.  Susan is able to capture the crossover between the adult and the childish perfectly in the last sentence of the paragraph: “The mess often has the form of what he will probably think like when he is a grown man, but the content of what he is like as a little boy.”  By bringing attention to Colin’s awareness towards the world around him and his future, Orlean reminds the reader that he is not simply a carefree child, but a growing boy that is more than capable of mature aspirations.