I just came from the washroom to clean my specs. Ah. Suddenly the world’s so much clearer without my thumbmarks all over.

Aaanyway. Did my homework of jumping on random blogs of people I either know personally, or have caught my attention then. I thought it’d be nice to finally catch up on their lives and how they blogged about it. Anyhoo, lives are as random as they could get: Tina currently can’t access her blog due to firewalls, but CAN amazingly post. I’m not gonna question that, because it has happened to me multiple times over. Viva’s in to this wonder as to why she’s into guys with long hair; Ade is into discovering his inner child, George is getting into tasting every kind of this particular snack, and JP still either has not moved on, or has not given his piece yet about the UAAP happenings. Which is rather unusual, so I’m assuming he’s nowhere near an internet connection.

Best one so far, though, is this short piece by Cholo. I dropped this rather long comment and once again forgot that comments are meant to be short, so here’s part of the full:

Come to think of it, parents have this idea of a default point of maturity that they assume, due to circumstances and years, it should at least make kids think twice before they make something materialize and not regret. Like maybe an ugly baby from an uglier father which was from a one night stand after finding him in a smoky bar and getting those terrible beer glasses on, and you wake up in the morning weeping your head off for having such a terrible, terrible taste when drunk and horny.

One would like to think that maybe it’s somehow dictated by the society. After all, 18 is where girls miraculously “mature” after such a huge glamorous party overnight taken from their dad’s semi-annual paycheck, and it’s where some boys realize there’s more to their palms. My own mother gave me a promise of finally going on overnights (inuman, debut et al) the moment I turn 18, which sadly, when I finally got on that age, there weren’t any more debuts to attend because EVERYONE was older than I am, and inumans forfeited because of university projects.

But think about it. 18 IS also the age you start to wonder about life and the future. Hmm. We START taking responsibilities because of the responsibility that age brings due to that pressure brought about by our own peers. Although I won’t let my own kid make life altering decisions till she’s forty.

I was thinking of getting a tattoo too. Except I can’t guarantee I’d look so hot with it still by the time I’m 55, so I’m postponing.

So I was pulling the best crap off my reasoning and came up with the idea that maybe–just maybe–peer pressure is good. Or maybe not peer pressure is what we call it. Maybe it’s more of a societal norms. For all the obvious reasons we are assumed to be looking after ourselves everytime after maybe preschool, but looking beyond ourselves and being responsible for everything around and how you should affect things–they become beyond GMRC school stuff and they become real. And something scary to handle and realize.

Weeks ago, I had the worst realization of what happened to me when I was 18. See, then, I was claiming to be too young to be taking up on better responsibilities yet claiming to be mature. Someone told me otherwise, and said he couldn’t be with me . He SHOULDN’T be with me. I never understood the whys till I got into an almost same situation myself, and I’m already 22. I finally understood, that, you just can’t corrupt minors when they are barely understanding what SHOULD be done.

Once, I got into a tiff with my mum over her restrictions about me doing school projects overnight over someone else’s place. I said it was embarassing and labelled her unfair, and we got into an all out war over it. Months later, when I was more settled to talk, I raised the subject again, this time with an air of calmness, claiming things to be matter of fact. You have to allow me to do these things sooner or later, mum, or else I won’t be able to contribute at all to my schoolmates and to our projects. She calmly said that I have grown up, and finally let me go.

That’s when I realize how it should be: things are better best decided when you’re calm, when you’re not raging with pms hormones, when you’re finally calm and not into the moment, when you’re writing down the pros and cons, when you’re imagining how things will be in a few years.

In short, when you’re a little out of the tactlessness of your youthful ideas, and when maybe, you’re a little less compulsive of your passions. Or better, when you know how to determine a passion between a whim. When you’re in THAT AGE that you can finally understand the complexities and maybe take long term responsibilities over it.

So does that mean…90?