Dreams, the Teenage Years, and the Great American Novel


I remember my room as a child. Andy Gibb, Leif Garrett, Shaun Cassidy and the Jacksons adorned my walls. I would spend hours in my room playing 45's and dreaming about meeting and marrying any one of my heartthrobs.

However, as I grew older I realized that as a thirteen year-old girl I would never be Mrs. Andy Gibb or Mrs. Leif Garrett, or even Mrs. Fill-in-the-blank-with-the-brother-of-your-choice Jackson. I had given up on my heartthrob dreams. I had matured. I was past the "Da Doo Run Run Run" and "I Was Made For Dancing" stage. I wanted--no, I needed more.

Enter Heavy Metal. When this music genre hit the scene, I realized that my idolizing energies had been misdirected. I had been pining after these wholesome, squeaky-clean, mop-topped teens that were singing these bubble-gum songs, and I recognized that these were boys pretending to be men. However, the guys of metal were different. These men -- their leather pants, bare chests, earrings, long hair, tattoos and badboy attitudes sent my teen senses (and hormones) into over-drive. As quickly as Andy, Leif, and Shaun came off my walls, Bon Jovi, Cinderella, and Skid Row went up. Again, I would spend hours in my room, this time armed with cassette tapes and MTV--dreaming of meeting my idols.

Alas, the inevitable occurred. I am not sure when it happened, or why, but the same reality that crept in with my first group of teen idols emerged with my heavy metal rock gods. Why did I shelve my dreams of marrying a rock star next to my high school yearbooks? When did I replace my Bon Jovi posters with floral prints and seascape portraits?

It was not my doing; time and maturity took hold and I knew that I had to grow and pursue dreams of my own making. Since I knew becoming Mrs. Rock Star was not going to happen, there was no sense in keeping the posters on the walls. Therefore, I took them down, and the seascapes and floral prints went up.

In a way, I am sad that becoming an adult had to be synonymous with giving up my childhood desires. We live in a society where children are supposed to dream but adults are not. Dreams are not faucets, they cannot be turned on and off like the kitchen sink. If you don't believe me, look around. The next time you are out with friends, observe the man at the bar who believes that his pain of never becoming a doctor will cease at the bottom of the bottle. Look at the clerk at the BuyNBag that wanted to be a dancer but never had the courage or the push to leave home. And the next time you are at a little league game -- observe the irate parents who wasted their youth and now attempt to live vicariously through their children. These people all shelved their dreams and are now living to regret it. The dreams are not the problem; the problem is the fear and insecurity of not pursuing them. Giving up a dream because it seems absurd or a long shot is not only wrong, but also detrimental to our very being. I would rather live with a plethora of "it didn't work out's" than one "what if".

I might have given up my dream of being married into the world or rock and roll, but I did not give up dreaming. Now I dream of writing the next Great American Novel, travelling the world, and owning my own island. Some would say my dream of marrying a rock star was more realistic. Nevertheless, I think that dreams are supposed to be big, they are supposed to be almost impossible to achieve. Otherwise, they are just things to cross off a 'to-do' list, and I think dreams are should be more important than that.

My eight-year-old daughter has just entered her idol phase. Pictures of the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync adorn her walls. She spends countless hours in her room armed with cassettes, CD's and videos dreaming about her idols. As I sneak peaks of her and her friends imitating dances and debating about which boy band has the cuter members, I am almost sad about what the future holds for her, her friends and their dreams. Then I remember what it was like for me at her age and the memories flood back as if it were yesterday. I climb up to my attic, open my college footlocker and take out my faded, dog-eared posters of my idols.

Hey, I said I took the posters down. I never said I threw them away.

Excerpt from Moments of Clarity - Get Your Copy Today!

- posted by Kim @ 4:03 PM