The silencing of Peter Pan

I've thought a lot lately about why I named my blog after a quote from The Outsiders. When I first watched this movie, in my early teens, it had little impact on me. I would never have said it was one of my favourite films, nor would I ever have quoted it to express something that is being left unsaid, something that is being lost in our society. It was just a movie about the greasers and the soc's, with an impressive roster of the young, male heartthrobs Hollywood had to offer us at the time, playing it young and misunderstood on the wrong side of the tracks. So I rented it the other day, to refresh my memory, to understand why this movie's relevance surfaced after all these years. The wary adult in me snickered at the tight jeans and corny lines, the awkward overacting. But the other part of me marvelled at just how natural the awkwardness was. This movie was made at a time when kid actors played kids, and were allowed to let some of their own pimpled angst seep into the roles. The authenticity, the lack of pretention, made the message of being safekeepers of innocence all the more potent and gave weight and validity to the emotional lives of kids.

Kids are heartbreakingly easy to damage, their ideas and naivetes entirely too vulnerable to prey upon. Having a childhood is a necessity. It is the temporary and unparalled freedom to indulge in awe and curiosity, to feel and act on emotion unfiltered by propriety. And as we age, and adults guard, guide, misunderstand and envy our youthful dispositions, we bristle and resist the interference, protecting our wonder and freedom to explore it in the context of an adult world. Drinking booze and pretending to like the taste, feeling the first hazy fog of pot, understanding sexual potency and identity, groping it in the dark. This is the electric thrill, playing adult with the closeted sensibility of a child, and it marks that time in our lives where we straddle the line of innocence and maturity, and are forced to give one up for the other. It is the first choice of real consequence we have to make in our lives.

But it's a choice that is riddled with interference.We are a society crackling with contradictions. We are obsessed with youth, but we impose maturity and adult situations on kids when they are scarcely out of the womb. We tantalize them with sexuality and the power structure it operates within through visual mediums like movies and television and magazine ads, and are somehow shocked when they display a willingness to participate in it. We are loathe to putting kids and sex in the same sentence, but are unable to accept our complicity in doing just that. Kids are being ruthlessly seduced into relinquishing their childhoods for the illusion of respect, to grow into lives shaped like beer commercials. We are hesitant to explore the depths and complexities that come with being a child, and scratch our heads with confused defeat when we fail to understand the surges of aggression and violence, high risk behaviour and emotional acidity they exhibit. Where has the joy of being a kid gone? When were books replaced with video games and television, when did materialism replace idealism? What's the mad rush to grow up?

I count myself as one of the lucky ones. I had a real childhood. I have the pictures and recollections to assure me. There were long car rides to Niagara Falls, ending in the consumption of countless cheese sandwiches and Oreo cookies. There were walks to the library every Saturday afternoon, holding my father's hand. There were skating parties in winter, all rosy cheeks and hot chocolate and avoiding Wilson, the boy who pestered me with his affections every year. There were movie nights with the old projector and a pull-down screen in our living room. There were magical nights sitting on lawnchairs on our backporch, watching the skies turn from day to night, swaddled in blankets and parents' arms under the watch of stars. And there were days to follow that were filled with inner torment, depression, migraines, acne, arguments, struggles with authority, and early dalliances with adult vices, all symptomatic of growing up. Like Holden Caulfield, Ponyboy Curtis, Thomas Penman, any of my coming-of-age anti-heroes, I wanted to be brave enough to question the pressures of 'cool', eye them through critical lenses. To hurt and act with quiet tenderness, and be a little bit delicate. To be weary of both adults and my peers. To never fully grow up and out of wonder.

And so, years later, I am still straddling the line. I can feel the ligaments slowly tearing as the opposing sides of youth and aging pull away under my feet, but I'm resisting, still hanging on to every last shred of gold.