What was your first mature thought?

The next time I set up my stand at the farmer's market I'll be sure to scan the trees in the neighborhood, looking for a woman peering through the leaves and wearing a tee shirt with the slogan "I Love Daytona Beach" emblazoned on the front.

I'll wave you down and you can examine my tomatoes.

Then, we'll stroll to the nearest table and eat cornbread in the shade as we discuss the subject of mature thoughts and at which age we first noticed them.

You're more likely to discuss wet t-shirt contests, while I would be talking something deep and philosophical like, "Gus, what games did you play as a kid. Don't you think it's rather immature to resort to pinning the tale on the donkey? Don't you know what a kick them critters have."?

Letty's memory of being a skinny little thing when young and learning to run reminded me of a mature thought I had when I was very young. I was reading at the age of 3, completely absorbed in "Run, Spot, Run." Burning questions remained...why all the running? Why must one be so quick? I decided to do some research. I pulled out my "Anglo-Saxon for Toddlers" and looked up "quick". To my surprise, it's meaning was "alive." My first mature thought: If quick meant alive, then I shall be quick, in wit, and in making my parents chase me as I ran from room to room yelling "Hi" and "Bye".

Heh, heh, Cav. "....from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead...." I really had a picture in my head when I first heard that read.

You know that I don't remember learning to read? When I did an informal survey some time back with a small sample of kids at the beach, I simply asked them. "How did you learn to read?" Almost 100% said, "I don't know. The teacher taught me, I guess."

I was watching labrynth, and aside from thinking David Bowie was ultra cool, I noticed somthing different, in his tights.

Oh! You -didn't- mean that kind of mature?

Ooooh, it had to have been when I got left behind at Concord Bridge. I was 5 (I think) and got forgotten by the rest of the family at the celebration held annually at Concord Bridge marking the 'shot heard round the world', the start of the American Revolution.

Anyway, I was alone, I decided that I'd try to walk home alone (a good couple of miles). That was not the mature thought. That came when I asked the policeman for help even though I was terrified of him.

I was 8 or 9, the parents were asleep and I snuck into the living room to watch a little HBO...The rest is history.

Child - pshhh. My parents were obcessed with Arnold movies and I had been secretly watching mindless violence since I was 7. I remembered the scene from T2 where the kid asks Arnold to please stop killing people because that was the only part I understood really.

What do you mean by mature thought though? Like understanding other people or something?

Good morning, all.

Welllllll, Portal Star--I loved labyrinth, too, but

Gorsh, littlek. I'd say that was pretty cool of you to keep your head and know what to do. Policemen still scare me.

Well child, You were mature enough to know that HBO had the "good stuff".

rufio. I was simply asking if you can recall when you stop thinking like a child and took your place in the adult thinking world. The example that I opened with, made me realize that although people seemed quite different in their appearance and manners, they were basically alike in behavior.

When I finally have a mature thought, I'll let you know.

Along the lines of Letty's first mature thought - remember the add for shampoo with the catch line: "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful"? I was out while I was a teeneager and I suddenly realized that people do that. They assume things about other people based on superfilcial factors as innate as beauty. I had a grade-school friend who was doing some modeling in HS. I thought she'd grown into a snob, but she hadn't. We'd just grown apart.

Wilso, I think that you just had your first.

LittleK. It is a relief to finally realize that who we are in our teens, has nothing to do with what we are. To me, high school was an arena where all the players were looking for some kind of victory or thumbs up. Interesting that you should see your friend as just taking another road--not vain nor disdainful. That was quite an epiphany.

You mean like realizing something that I hadn't been taught to think? I can't remember the first. I kind of gave up on people after my best friend in elementary school moved towns. My parents tried to foster a kind of elitism in me early on because they wanted me to live up to their academic acheivements. I was a pretty selfish, cruel, jerklike child then, and no one really liked me much either which didn't help much. It wasn't really until high school that I gradually started to hang out with the great unwashed and try to figure out if I was really a independant person or just a product of cultural fairy tales.

Rufio, There is a point in our lives when we begin to think independently of what we were taught to think. When that moment arrives, we might say that's when we go from being egocentric to seeing ourselves as just part of a larger theme. In the example that I gave, that was MY thought, and not necessarily a part of the nature/nurture thing.

I can identify with the expectancy of getting a higher education, because as in many Jewish communities, one didn't ask IF they were going to college, they simply discussed WHERE they were going to college.

In your case, you suddenly realized that you enjoyed the association with ordinary people, probably more so than the elitists with whom you were taught to identify, and on that recognition, you may have started your journey into manhood.

litllek, thank God you found that policeman before Slappy found you.

I meant soft core porn

Hey, Gus, you fickle thing. All LittleK has to do is slap slappy's sassy face.

Now--back to the serious stuff...sheeeeeze.

Guess not....

Soft porn is ok on a rainy day...and my goodness, I thought Arnold the Pig was who was being discussed.

When I was a kid, growing up in London, we didn't see many black faces but not far from us was a black family from the West Indies. They were good people, the father played for the local cricket club & was very popular. The mother was a nurse, I think. I & others used to play football & other games with the son, Steven & everyone got on just fine.
One day I said to my mother ----- "I wish I had short black curly hair like Steven." (my mother was far from amused). I was about 13 years old & I didn't know about racism then & I've always rejected it throughout the rest of my life.

"I can identify with the expectancy of getting a higher education, because as in many Jewish communities, one didn't ask IF they were going to college, they simply discussed WHERE they were going to college.

In your case, you suddenly realized that you enjoyed the association with ordinary people, probably more so than the elitists with whom you were taught to identify, and on that recognition, you may have started your journey into manhood."

Womanhod, but yeah....

Also, when you discuss where you're going to college, state schools don't count, except as backups. And backups are really just a pointless tradition, right.

I actually didn't live on the rich side of town, so I went to school with a lot of nonJewish (and predominanatly Mexican) people, yet for some reason I seemed to growup with all the Jewish people from the other side of town. It's really a tight-knit thing. People tell other people where they should send their kids and when the kids go off everyone knows where they went. There are all-Jewish schools, high school sorority/frat-like Jewish social clubs, synagogues and sunday schools, and older kids that grow up to help teach the sunday schools during high school after they've graduated from them, and something called "hebrew high" which was nominally sort of an extracurricular place to learn about Jewish history and study hebrew, but it was all about the social interaction.... I went to a Jewish middle school, and hebrew high, and helped teach sunday school for my whole high school carreer... I got inducted into one of these social groups at hebrew high, and surprise surprise, they were filled with people I already knew from any number of other places... and I would never see any of these people walking down my street and only a few at school. It's really quite a complex establishment.

Okay, I think I've isolated the first instance. I was either 4 or 5 when; my sister (two years older) and I were told we couldn't leave the dinner table until we finished our peas. But these were not the pale green, flavorless canned peas we were used to. These were bright green (frozen) peas and I wasn't about to put something like that in my mouth... Especially not; after seeing the expression they left on my sister's face when she ate one. Plus she described them as "florescent" ; and that didn't sound too good me. Worse still, I couldn't get Spooky (my dog) to eat them either. After what seemed like a long time; my mother told us our father was going to spank us if the peas weren't eaten in five minutes. Of course we agreed this "wasn't fair" and steeled our resolve to not eat the offending veggies.
But on our "final warning"; my cowardly sister started gobbling up the peas like they were candy! I couldn't believe it. I'd been betrayed by my sole source of moral support and left to ponder the consequences of my actions alone. I looked down at the peas again. They were glowing almost supernaturally. I new they hadn't killed my parents and my sister wasn't getting sick... what should I do? My father stepped into the room, saw my sister had cleared her plate and excused her. There he stood, towering over me with a menacing look and before he even spoke; I knew what had to be done. I said "I said I'm not going to eat the peas and I'm not going to eat the peas" and then I dropped my head and closed my eyes and resigned myself to my fate. I heard my father take the plate away, scrape it into the garbage and leave the room. I don't know how long I sat there and I don't remember what happed after that. I do know I didn't get the spanking and I remember realizing that I was absolutely right to stand up for what I believed in. I was quite proud of myself.
In retrospect; that was probably the exact moment I developed my "I fight authority, authority always wins " dilemma that plagued me throughout my childhood and to a certain extent still does. I probably would have been better off with the spanking.
Ps My father doesn't remember the incident but my sister and I will never forget it. Beware of the florescent peas. :wink: