You Suck(ed), Suckers!

I used to really hate suckers. I know, I know, how could I hate those classic candies? Everyone liked them – I remember all the other kids in my class grabbing madly at them whenever they were offered as a prize. I, however, refused to eat them. You see, I had a bit of a superiority complex about those widely beloved sweets, believing them to mediocre and therefore beneath me. (So humble, right?) Despite all my friends’ best efforts to convince me otherwise, suckers remained just sugar and water in a rip-off version of the lollipop. What was so great about that? Candy, especially Dum-Dums or Whirly Pops or whatever it was, was wildly overrated. Everyone else was just silly for giving into the teachers’ obvious bribes. I, however, was mature enough not to keel over for some worthless candy.   

In reality, I didn’t really hate the suckers themselves – I just didn’t want to be seen as childish. I had somehow worked it out in my head that suckers were associated with immaturity, and therefore vowed never to enjoy one of them. I had never seen any adults eating those cheap candies, and if they didn’t, I wouldn’t either. No, I wanted to be more mature, more “grown-up” than I actually was, and eating candy would only hinder that version of myself.  

Most people have probably wished to “grow up” faster sometime during their adolescence. I was no different. The teens and young adults were always the cool ones, the ones in the loop, the ones they made movies about. I yearned to be cool like them, to be free of the feeling that I wasn’t yet enough, and that meant seeing certain kid-ish things (aka, suckers) as beneath my dignity. For some of you, this desire to be “adult” might have been less intense, but for me it was often all-consuming. I think this desire was particularly accelerated for me because of how others already perceived me as older. I’ve always been taller than most, and while the gap between myself and the average has narrowed in recent years, my height was much more noticeable when I was younger. Adults always thought I was older than I was, to the point where someone asked me what my major was when I was in 7^th grade. I was also the eldest sibling and had skipped a grade early on, so I was perhaps justified in thinking of myself as older and more responsible than some others of my age. Perhaps I even was more mature, in some ways; people were always telling me that I acted older, that I seemed more levelheaded. All the praise got to my head in a bad way – I liked all the extra respect. I loved it. I loved being told that I was more “mature”, more “grown up” than one would expect for my age. It was the equivalent of being told that I was cool, and for a while being “cool” was all I (and most of the other kids) aspired for.

          Of course, my (ironically) juvenile superiority complex disappeared with time, and my dislike of suckers eventually retreated to the back of my mind. My desire to “grow up”, however, never really faded, even if it was without all the baggage of self-supremacy. I simply started to express it in other ways, in all the popular “tween” ways – posting “aesthetic” photos on Instragram, going out without parents, and dating when I was obviously too young for it. Only when I started to seriously anticipate my college years (I know, I know) did I think twice about adulthood. Did I really want to grow up that fast? Did I really want to leave my parents and fend for myself? Did I really want to “come of age” as soon as I could? The answer I found myself giving was a somewhat surprising no. No, I didn’t want to grow up that fast; I didn’t want to live in an accelerated timeline. In fact, I was rather missing the days when I had the freedom to not think about growing up, and wishing that I had been a little kid when I had the chance. I was kind of jealous of my younger self, who had the leisure to act a child, and I regretted not making more quintessential childhood memories. I wanted to remember being completely obsessed with silly movies, playing with dolls at age seven, and being told not to toy with my food like all my other friends had been. Most of all, I wanted to remember eating suckers when my teachers offered them in class.

            I gave up wanting to grow up faster the moment I started feeling even slightly grown up. The coming-of-age had crept up on me with all the baggage and responsibility and difference of adulthood, and I wanted to slam on the brakes the moment I glimpsed it around the corner. I wasn’t quite ready for that yet. I needed to slow down a little, and stop living my life as if I were so much older than I really was. I was still sixteen, and I’d be damned if I didn’t live out that age as nothing more than a sixteen-year-old.  

            Now, at the brink of turning seventeen, I’ve managed to slow down the pace of my life. Not to sound like a motivational speaker or anything, but I’ve lived out the past year without wanting to be any age but the age I was, and have found that it’s infinitely more rewarding than aspiring to be something I’m not. I’ve allowed myself to be sixteen, to go to parties and watch movies and get excited over the little things. I’ve allowed myself to not have it all figured out, to be confused about my identity and ask naïve questions. And, finally, I’ve allowed myself to like suckers, even if they are really just pieces of sugar on sticks.