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Village Squire, 1980-08, Page 54P.S. We're aging ... fast BY KEITH ROULSTON Sooner or later we all begin to think about growing older. To some of us it just happens faster than others. 1 mean Jack Benny spent 40 years or so being 39. Me, I'm a fair distance from 39 yet and already I feel old. We came to that realization the other night, Jill and I did, as we sat and watched a movie about a touching, teenage first love. It said something about the quality of summer television that we were watching the movie at all. It wasn't a terrible movie but it wasn't a masterpiece either and we'd already watched it two years ago. But it was one of those lazy summer nights when there wasn't enough energy around to do anything but stare at a television screen so we did. We were about halfway through when Jill said it first. Funny," she said, "the last time we saw this picture I thought about it from the part of the young girl. This time I'm feeling like the girl's mother instead." I'd been feeling the same way, only like the girl's father of course. And good grief, what a different perspective it gave you. Suddenly I felt about 50 years old...or at least I had the kinds of feelings I'd always thought were reserved for people so much older. Romantic first loves are always a lot more romantic if you can think of yourself as one of the participants rather than the innocent bystanders hoping everything will turn out for the best: the parents. I knew what had changed our perspec- tive so quickly. A few days earlier and we could have looked at the movie with the same innocent eyes as before. Sure we could think about the future when our own PG. 48 VILLAGE SQUIRE/AUGUST 1980 children would be fumbling their way through the pains of growing from child to adult but that was safely years away. The illusion was shattered that day in late June when the children came home from school for the last time in the year and daughter number one told of going to a school dance. She'd danced nearly every dance. And, she said proudly, she'd finally had the nerve to put her head on a boy's shoulder. That, I think, was what did it. I mean whatever happened to that safe period when boys and girls hated each other; when the only time a boy would go near a girl was to pull her pigtails. Oh I can remember early romantic feelings. I remember being dared by older boys to kiss a girl when I was in grade one but by the time I was in grade three, no dare on earth could get me to do that. Going over Niagara in a barrel would have been a stronger possibility than dancing with a girl when I was in grade four. For girls, I'm sure, the revulsion was just as strong. Oh the girls came out of that period a little earlier than boys, but just the same there was that nice, safe, never-never land where boys and girls were as separate as if there were a fifteen -foot -high fence be- tween them. What, we wondered in panic, if that age of animosity between the sexes is some- thing of the past, like black and white television or ducktail haircuts? I mean it's one thing that girls are maturing sexually at an earlier age today but it's another if you have to fight those battles from the time your daughter is 10 years old. Especially when you've got three daugh- ters to bring up. We began to resent the society of today that tries to rush kids into growing up. Why is it that we think it is cute to ask every little boy or girl if they have a girlfriend? Why do the schools have to start kids going to dances in grade four in the first place? I didn't go to a dance for people my own age until I was in grade nine. That puts my daughter five years ahead of me on that slippery road of boy -girl relations. And yet all the time we talked about this I had the strange feeling I was a character out of one of those movies that were popular when I was a teenager: the worried, archaic father from a Gidget movie of one of those beach party movies, the guy who's slightly silly and old fashioned. We used to laugh at the foolishness of those "old" men. Somehow I wasn't laughing anymore. That old man was me. We've recovered a little from our feelings of panic. I mean it's summer holidays and there isn't a boy within miles. We still have a few years of working out what course we think we'll take when the growing up becomes more than an end -of - school dance party. At least I hope we have. But somehow the teenage years seem a lot closer than they did just a month ago. I wish I could tell the ending of this story but I'm afraid you'll have to wait a bit: at least 10 years for daughter number one and 20 or more for number three. If we survive that long. Meanwhile I'm wondering about how to use the couple of years breather we have before the heavy breathing years start. Maybe I should start stacking up on the ultra -feminist literature: you know, the kind that's so strong that the women hate men and you'd wonder how they could ever get close enough to a man to carry on the race? Maybe if the girls read that we could breathe easier a little longer. NATURAL Celebrating our 1st year in business Aug. 14-15-16 "BE HAPPY TO SEE YOU" 75 Hamilton St. GODERICH Phone 524-7561 Closed Wed. Aft.