How we have changed

Happy 500th entries! okay...just a little short break from the story marathon...I found this piece of article on StarMag,The Star on 12th Apr..thought of sharing with you all ;)

How we have changed by Jean Marie Ambrose and Kathleen Gillian De Cruz

We were young and innocent, oblivious to everything. "Babies are from belly buttons". That's what we believed. We made paper planes and imitated the Power Rangers. Cooked bougainvilleas and leaves on Barbie kitchen sets, playing pretend while mummy cooked in a real kitchen. Boys? Eeeww!

Years have passed since then. Many years. Now mummy expects the cooking to be done on a real kitchen set and we dream on flying away in a real plane. We watch One Tree Hill and 90210 (the new version). We expect to get flowers, not cook them, and we have long stopped playing pretend. We are not so innocent, and wonder how the younger ones can be so ignorant and oblivious. Boys? giggles.

We've grown up...everywhere! suddenly life is so much more complicated than wondering about which toy we want to play with today. Getting up means having to decide what to wear. Everyday brings another question. Many of which still remain unanswered.

People have changed. We have changed. Playground buddies are now sliding off different things, and we are swinging in different directions. The Monkey Bar is a new club in town. The grass, as usual, is greener on the other side. Now, when we say, "Go fly kites", we don't get that enthusiastic response we used to.

Ironic, isn't it?

When we were young, we used to talk about the future. Now, we try to hide our past and avoid the future. What are we afraid of? wrinkles? judgment? abandonment? gossip? loneliness? hurt? change? others? ourselves? we used to play pretend, but the world's a stage, literally, and everyone is an actor. Sometimes we wish we'd stop playing that game, get out of character and costume, remove the masks and write our own scripts.

Conversation took place at slumber parties, and we used to tell stories and giggle till the wee hours of the morning. Now we sit in the dark corners of our room and speak to little screens. Our thumbs tend to move faster than our thoughts and we've lost the ability to look people in the eyes whilst having a conversation.

Everything is suddenly virtual. We are slowly going mute. Abbreviations increase our talking space, but ironically cut down our talk time. Sex, now does not mean gender. Giggling about sex does not mean we're embarrassed to talk about it, it means we've thought about it. Boys are still "Ewwww!" because now it's the man we're after.