Another year packed away on a high shelf.

I spent most of this morning cramming four years into a box. I have two boxes -- one that runs until Grade Four, and one for 5-8. Someday I'll look through what I thought I had restricted to the bare minimum of my life chronicles and decide I no longer need any of it.

It's interesting how relative maturity is. I have always considered myself mature. Yet I have also always known that in less than a year I will look back and laugh at how naive I was. However, I believe any maturing I'm doing is slowing dramatically...I'm not likely to become much smarter than I am now.

Oh, and here's one of my numerous pet peeves: the word grown-up. Or the phrase, to grow up. Or the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? This annoys me because I really don't plan on doing much more growing up, and I am certain that some of my friends are far more grown up mentally than most adults.

Wait, you're thinking. She's contradicting herself again. How can you be more grown-up than a grown-up? However, I see adults and grown-ups as different -- the source of my confusion regarding this issue.

We have a definition of an adult -- a responsible individual who is aged at least so and so years. What defines a grown-up? Are we considered grown-up at the point when we peak mentally or physically? Or at the point when we settle down and begin to live in a mundane and routine fashion? The phrase grown-up implies a zenith, an epitome. A flower, for example, is considered grown to full potential when it flowers (and the reproductive systems begin working, by the way), because this is when the flower is most beautiful.

This may sound ludicrous, but I would think that the zenith of our lives would apply to the first idea -- which refers to when we are how old? Six? Eleven? Seventeen? Certainly at some point before middle age. Probably before we begin working. Would we refer to a wilting flower as peaking? No, the epitome must occur before the halfway point -- before we begin to decline. If we peak during adolescence, if we are grown before we are adults, the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is therefore illogical and nonsensical.

My sister learned a piece on the piano in ten minutes yesterday. Seven notes, both hands involved. She impresses me more all the time. Now I must go and play chess with her.

if you need a friend, i'm sailing right behind