Christopher

"A young man wakes early and sighs. He hates this title, 'young man'. He finds it both ill-fitting and somehow condescending. He imagines that whoever first coined the phrase found the little oxymoron to be quite clever, but this particular young man hates it. He wonders sometimes at what age a person became simply a man or woman without being saddled with the prefix of 'young'. And marvels that people who use these terms would actually believe that age and maturity really have anything to do with one another. Surely he had known people many years his senior whom he had outstripped in maturity by the age of fifteen. It was probably not the original intention, but this tiny seed of insinuation was enough to sour him against the expression for life. He couldn't understand what society's rationale for this line of reasoning could possibly be. The way he saw it, to say that an individual's biological age is the sole indicator of maturity is akin to saying that the measure of a life is simply how well they have physically developed. Unfortunately for him there is no title which fits him or his generation any better. For, he is still young in the grand scheme of things. And the maturity that he does possess in not of the sort which can easily be seen by others. He enjoys actions which have been labeled 'childish' by his culture and because of such he receives this stigma himself. While it would be possible to prove his manhood in most cases, he feels little need to do so. He fully realizes what most people think of him but he holds no value in their opinions. In his view, the average person is little better than cattle from an intellectual standpoint. He hardly thinks of himself as as genius (at least not openly) but he likes to think that he's at lest above average. His opinion of most others is so low however, that he feels he easily dwarfs them with his 'above average' intelligence. He has never claimed that this condescending attitude is normal or healthy, but he accepts it about himself in the same way he acepts the color of his hair and eyes. He realizes that this air of intellectal superiority is a flaw in his character but he sees it as soething which defines who he is, rather than something which needs to be changed."