I wouldn't want to be a kid again.....at least now

I was driving in to the studio this morning....around 11 am, and was amazed to see the amount of middle school-aged kids on the street. Was there a half day? School fire? Water main break?

Either way, for some reason I was fascinated by them. First of all at least half were on cell phones. Now I know they are ubiquitous, but c'mon why, in the name of all that is good and sacred does a ten year old need a cell phone?!? I don't know, maybe I'm showing my age. All I know is that NOTHING ever happened in my life, when I was ten, that warranted constant communication.

I saw two boys, who could not have been over, thirteen smoking. It was one of the funniest things I had seen in a long time. They seemed so proud of it too. I think they might have been strutting a little.

There was a large group of kids hanging out outside of a corner store. I was a little scared to see how eerily similar their social dynamic was to what I see when I go out to a bar. Granted, I was only able to watch them for the length of a red light (and the time it took some asshole to turn left, without signaling of course) but you could see the "alpha" people, the "fringe" people, who liked who....................I swear it was like I was on a safari.

All of them were trying to look and act as if they were much older. I never understood why kids (and this includes myself at the time) are/were in such a rush to be older. For fuck sake it happens naturally at a fast enough pace, there's really no reason to hasten it on.

It's this kind of crap that freaks me out a little about ever being a parent........not that that's a possibility now or even in the near future.