21 Years: Old Enough to Drink and Drive

911 BLACK JACK
A poem says of attaining majority age that when I was one and twenty, I heard a wise man say, about a lesson not learned as an adult for at least another year. An old proverb says that when I was a child I spake as a child. And another poem speaks of when you shall be a man, my son. And, generally, when it comes to the law and being entitled to full enjoyment of all of the privileges and rights of a citizen, the age to attain is 21, a thought as the tragedy of 9/11 attains majority age, old enough to vote, drink and drive, but a friend who is a responsible adult will never let another friend drink and drive, even if he or she lets you vote at the polls.

When I was a child, as embarrassing as it may be, I thought as a child, and can still remember seeing the Pygmalion tale, My Fair Lady, and when I heard the phrase, "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain", I heard "plane", and just figured that a trip to Barcelona or Madrid would require a raincoat. But, at some point I encountered homonyms and recognized my error, but was free to continue thinking like a child. Change is inevitable, but growth is optional.

I can remember being in kindergarten around Christmas and having a visit from Santa Claus to our classroom, and recall vividly the reindeer prancing on cue when Santa said they were up on the roof, somehow not making the connection that if Rudolph was on the roof, he wouldn't be likely to be banging so hard it sounded like stomping feet on the second floor. And, I remember returning to that classroom in the eighth grade as one of Santa's helpers, while others went up to the classroom to begin prancing on cue. And, since the kindergarten classroom was across the street in another building, I had had no opportunity or reason to have returned, and was astonished not so much as how small the kindergartners were, but was surprised at how much the entire room had shrunk. And, I was free to believe, informed by the situation, that magic had shrunken the chairs, the table and the room, and in stage illusion this dissonance actually has a name that has been defined in neuroscience for those illusions where a change is so gradual and unnoticed that you have to pause and compare the present state to the one that preceded to notice the "delta", or change.

Well, today, we pass that majority age anniversary of the December 7, 1941 for many grandparents, and the November 22, 1963 for many older adults, the day we look back and remember where we were and what we were doing when it occurred, and, hopefully, by the age of 21 we can look at events as responsible adults.