I wonder sometimes, how much adult opinions about youth are colored by adult experience instead of youth memory. It seems like I’ve known forever that nostalgia is hogwash: remembering the angst of adolescence as “the carefree, best time in life” or trying as an adult to engineer and duplicate holiday traditions that were in truth obnoxious when experienced as a child.

Those admonitions about stretching, about not swimming for an hour after food, about reading in good light? Those are good suggestions for older folks, and unnecessary for kids.

Or what about those 30-something guys whose wives are pregnant, and who say “I hope it’s not a girl, because I remember what adolescent boys are like”…? No they don’t! Most teenage boys are shy or easy for the girl to govern, that way. Most of the time, the young couple go only as far as the female permits. But guys in their mid-30s are still horny and now way less inhibited. Those incipient dads are feeling their own urges and laying them in the groins of well-meaning boys.

The facts, the actual experiences, of me and my acquaintances were not what the grownups warned about then, and not what many of my peers are reminiscing about now. The truth is, kids are more durable than portrayed. Oh we lost a few to automobile or climbing accidents, and drugs took a handful who were close to the edge anyway, but most of us made it through. The nails in the playground equipment didn’t lock our jaws, the strangers didn’t snatch us, we learned from being bullied and from making mistakes, and we had long horizons in which to recover. The boogie-man consequences just didn’t occur.

But it’s different for adults. Grownups have a boatload of experiences (mostly unprocessed) they have to haul around. And they have far less recovery time. If they don’t eat right they will probably experience the sad result soon. If they don’t parent wisely they may in fact lose their offspring. I have been shocked at the severity of the consequences that can besiege grown people.

It may be time for the kids to be the advisors.

I never thought reality would be
as absolute as this, or as abrupt.
Apprentice training showed me subtlety
till recently. Catastrophes erupt
around me: first a child’s unseen death –
by father lost and way too lately missed –
and then a friend is gagged; her expert breath
by passion blown, she’s ordered to desist.

I ponder consequence: I’ve watched the plays
and read the fables, but they didn’t seem
intended to be literally construed.
Of late I am agape. Reactions raze
the crazy actors; consequences ream
their lives. The fates are fell. The runes are rude.