150: Kids As Adults
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When Adam was a junior in high school, living in New York, he got invited to this party that he was petrified to go to. The kids not only seemed more grown up, they talked about how grown up they were. And when he got there, there's no dancing or goofing around. Everyone just sat around a coffee table, about a dozen kids, casually drinking beers. Just talking. I don't remember exactly what we talked about, but I just remember it was all very quiet and people would sort of nod while you were talking. And during this very grown up party, a party unlike any Adam had ever been to, a couple got up and left the room for a while. At some point I realized that they were in the bedroom for quite some time with the door closed. With the door closed. And I mean, you know, we were 16, I'm kind of, you know, nobody was giggling, nobody was observing this fact, nobody was making mention of this, I mean it was just what adults do, it was just this is what you do at a party. After a while, the boy and girl walked from the bedroom to the bathroom and they showered together. Then, the boy, wearing a terry-coth bathrobe, rejoined the party. But as Adam went to more parties with this crowd, this would happen a lot. A couple would go off, have sex, and then return to the party all the while, acting like this was no big deal at all. At that time, did you think, okay, well, this is the way that adults act? Yeah, it was also mysterious. I would have kind of bought anything about those things, you know. I didn't really, it seemed to me like this is how sophisticated cool adults were. I mean, the crucial things was nothing was a big deal, nothing was worth commenting on. Of course, why would you want to be prematurely bossy about sex? Well, part of being a kid is wanting to be a grown-up already. And throughout childhood, from a very early age, you try on various adult behaviors for size. You rehearse being an adult long before you get the part full time. And sometimes, in these rehearsals, you just get it wrong. Today in our program, stories of kids trying to act like adults, sometimes by their own choice, sometimes because they have no choice, and what they get right and wrong. From W.B. Chicago and public radio international to American life, I'm out of glass. At one of our program today, I was a teenage ambulance driver in which we asked the question, "Can it be good for you as a kid to see some things that you just don't want to see?" Act two, House husband at 12, the story of two brothers escaping Vietnam, and how one ended up doing the cooking and cleaning for the other. Act three, the mis-education of Josh Frank, in which an average American 17-year-old explains why it's okay to ignore everything you're supposed to like about high school and start your career in the big city. Act four, angry young man, times two. What it's like to be a teenager sent to a maximum security prison, and what it's like to be an adult, working with kids like that, knowing it could have been you. Stay with us. Act one, I was a teenage ambulance driver. Mike Petternity has this story that takes place way back in the late 20th century.
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