I've never actually asked a doctor about it , but , lately, I've been concerned.  I look in the mirror ,and I see that I've aged, but I don't feel it.  I don't feel like I'm almost thirty-five.  In fact, I fele very close to seventeen.  This isn't necessarily a good thing either.  It seems that everything in my life conspires to remind me how much I do not resemble an adult on the inside.  I feel like a grown man housing a kid on stilts ina trenchcoat trying to get into a dirty movie.  I feel like a sham.

 I'm not whining or bemoaning my sham-hood.  I just feel like every milestone that was supposed to herald adulthood didn't.  Marriage. The birth of my son.  Big time adult woes. Financial despair.  None of these made me feel like more of a mature adult. 

I still see myself as an awkward shy teenager.  I stammer on  the phone. I see people, who I don't eve ndislike, in the mall, and I step into Candy Craze to avoid them.  I sit in my den and read comic books from my youth.  I do all of these things, and I tend to my reponsibilities even as i wonder when I will finally be a grown-up.

This stasis also makes me look upon people my age with awe.  I wonder if I would be more successful, more celebrated if I had grown up sooner.   I see the boys I grew up with walking around as men,  Yes, they are sometimes loose maifestations of manhood, but they are men nonetheless, and I wonder if they see me in my big boy clothes and realize that something happened and I am stuck far, far behind them.