I never really thought I’d be this old. That might sound strange on paper because I’m relatively young compared to most, but when I was a kid, I was under the assumption that I couldn’t get to be older than 18. It’s not that I didn’t believe I could age; more, I could never imagine growing out of childhood. I had always subconsciously believed that the responsibilities, the friends, and even the fictional characters I had loved at age 9 would grow with me. Even now, I don’t really believe I’m as old as I am; in my head, I’m still in middle school, and I haven’t grown up enough to sit at the big kids’ table.
Some might attribute it immaturity or childishness, but I’ve always been a scared little kid at heart, and growing up, I was also an avid reader. Ostriches bury their heads in the sand when they think danger’s coming—I tucked my face behind the covers of my books and thought I could hide from the world. Almost every waking minute I had was spent absorbed in a book; I read so much and so often that I could get through a 500-page novel in a day.
All that time spent in fantasy worlds, however, gave me a squinted view of reality. Could you blame me? I would read story after story after story about the same preteen in some fantasy world, running off to fight dragons and fall in love. At the end of the journey, they go home to their boring, normal lives and then… what? What happens?
Have you ever heard of the intrepid hero coming home after the adventure is over and filling out a college application? Has the quirky comic relief ever had to sit through hours of SAT prep and driver’s ed? Percy Jackson certainly never had to register to vote, or apply for internships and summer programs, or learn how to write the perfect college essay.
The stories I encountered as a child typically ended the moment the heroes got to their front doors, with a few jumping twenty years in the future to show you a brief glimpse of marriage, kids, and age-earned wisdom. Once you read enough of those kinds of finales, you don’t really think much about what lies in the time between.
Now, I suddenly find myself at the front doorstep, almost towards the end of my high school journey. In a year or so, I’ll be going off to college—a fact that just hit me with the upcoming graduations of a few of my friends. I can look over my shoulder and see that some of my favorite characters from childhood are now blocks behind me, unable to hold my hand through the process of opening the door.
They’re frozen, in a sense. Ash Ketchum, the bright hero from Pokémon, has been 10 years old since 1997; Arthur, the glasses-wearing aardvark, has been 8 longer than I’ve been alive. When “Into the Spider-Verse” first came out in 2018, I was just 11 years old. At the time, the main character, Miles Morales, was 13—two years older than me. I remember thinking to myself back then, “God, I’m never gonna get that old, that mature, that experienced.” However, when I watched the sequel, “Across the Spider-Verse,” during its release last summer, I was shocked to find that I was a year older than him. While I had aged five years in the real world, Miles had only aged two in his fictional universe of supervillains and radioactive spiders.
It’s disconcerting to think that I’ve run out of lessons to learn from them; I’ve already gotten through my ABCs and learning to share with my classmates. “Odd Squad” episodes on dividing and counting the sides on shapes mean nothing to me now that I’ve gotten a bite of precalculus. Even Miles and Percy, who are still around my current age, are learning lessons and experiencing things I’ve just gotten to. For once, I don’t have some storybook hero to plot the journey ahead.
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to outgrowing my favorite childhood characters; in fact, I can barely get a handle on growing up, period. It’s a scary, uncertain thing—every year added to my age means another year I get further and further from the safety of my childhood heroes, and the simpler life that came with them. At the same time, though, I’m excited.
There is something both terrifying and thrilling about not knowing where to go next. After all, isn’t that something most great heroes have faced? Odysseus wandered aimlessly from island to island for 10 years before finally finding his way home. The challenges he faced were hard, and not everything was fine at the end—he lost members of his crew and missed seeing his son grow up—but he made it, didn’t he?
Growing up is my odyssey, but everyone has their own personal epic—one that’s only partially filled with the lesson and knowledge their favorite stories have imparted on them through the years. The filled pages only go so far. The other sheets are blank, and it’s up to us to write the rest.
