Indian Identity

Today I would like to thank Martin Luther King for helping me create what I consider to be my Indian American Identity.  What does that mean, you ask? Let me explain:

Fist of all, even though my skin color is a little different than the average person in America, I am still an American.  Sometimes it's hard for me to say this because when people look at me they see a person who comes from another country, yet I grew up here. This is my home. America defines me first.

Secondly, I still retain some of my parent's Indian culture, or I should say my Indian culture. I understand some of the language, I follow some of the religious rituals, and I like some of the food. Some of my values come straight from my parent's homeland, I find that I have slightly different values than the average American.

So maybe you want to ask me why I have to call myself an Indian American as opposed to just an American? Because often times I look in the mirror and I see a person with so many different dimensions.  I don't see blonde hair and blue eyes, but when I talk Hindi does not come out of my mouth.

The truth is I wouldn't fit in India even if I tried, I'm different than Indians in India.  I sometime hang out with Indian people in America just to feel like there is somewhere I fit in.

I am often between two cultures and have the right to define myself within the borderlines of these cultures.  Sometimes I don't feel Indian at all and sometimes I don't feel American at all.  I also have a unique religious identity as a Sikh.  Sikhs are a minority in India so I sometimes define myself as a Sikh Indian American.

When I walk around town, I'm one of those people who is mistaken to have many different culutral identities. People think I'm Arabic or Mexican etc.  I don't mind this at all, it makes me feel worldly in fact.

However, I remember a time when I didn't feel so worldly.  My uncle wears a turban and he was living with us in 1984.  There were huge riots in India during this time because two Sikh men had assasinated the Prime Minister of India, Indra Gandhi.  I suppose someone must have seen this on the news, since it was on the news every night.

It stared with eggs, they threw a few eggs at our window and we could hear laughter coming from outside.  Then, the next day, it was tomatoes.  And finally they threw rocks through our windows.

We don't know who did it. I remember feeling scared and hated and feeling ill.  I didn't really realize, at that age, that I was so radically different than the average person.  That we as a family were so different, different enough that people should throw stones.

I couldn't talk to anyone about it really, most of my friends were white at the time.  I just went about my business with this new feeling of uncertainty.  I felt like maybe, there was a chance, I did not belong in this country.

However, eventually I would read about Martin Luther King Jr. and how he helped make it so people like me would be accepted no matter what.  Of course he was an idealist, but so am I.

I know there are people who look at me now and think I could be the girlfiriend or wife of a terrorist, or something like that.  I think they think that I might be someone who doesn't speak English well even though I have two degrees in English.

The Civil Rights movement was not only for Black people, it was for everyone who felt like they had a place in this country, a place that was not being respected.

My place may look different than yours, but we share a space on this earth.  America may not look like other countries because of people like me, people who mix things up, and I'm proud of that.

I'm proud of who I am and I will be a part of this country, a part of this world, and I will force you to accept me.

Whether or not you like it, I'm here to stay.

nina

Should we Care?

You wanna know what I care about the most: me.  I care about myself first probably, I mean come on, let's be real.  My family comes in a very close second, I feel like I care about them more than myself, but I cannot guarantee that.  And then I care about my friends.  Are you kinda the same?

If anything bad happens to any of these people, especially me, I'm upset.  Why I should care about one more natural disaster or famine etc. in a foreign country sometimes bewilders me.  Sometimes I just don't care.

Does that make me devil-like, or just human-like?

I don't want to be like this, I want to care more, but sometimes I can't stand how every single day there is something going on somewhere to somebody.  I want to take a break from the world and escape in my own bubble.  The bubble of my life, where my people are.

I'm sure there is a lot on your mind right now.  You may be reading this, talking on the phone, eating lunch and thinking of your plans for a weekend getaway all at the same time.  You are worried about bills and relationships and maybe even your own mortality.  Then you switch on the news...

There was a huge flood in Brazil.  420 people are dead.  Most likely you don't know any of those people. You sit through that and see that there are food riots in countries all across the world because the price of food has soared internationally.  So the question is, should you care?  Should you worry?  Why?  Do you change the channel to Real Housewives of Atlanta or do you watch in horror as Wolf what's his name on CNN tells you about mass devastation?

There are tragedies going on all around the world every minute of the day. How many are reported on and how many are ignored often determines whether we care or not.  But let's for a moment trust our news sources and decide, should we care about natural disasters in other countries? Should we care about unfair wars in other countries? Should we care about tyranny and poverty in other countries?

Well the sad thing is, when Katrina occurred, it seemed as though our own government didn't care enough about it to do enough and left many people in horrific situations.  But is Katrina more important than what happens in Brazil?  Did you notice that people all around the world were concerned about Katrina, yet how many Americans will be worried about world tragedies?

I mean, of course you are gonna try and protect and be concerned about your own home first.  America is my home and when something happens within it's borders I am more concerned than I would be if something happened in India, even though my cultural heritage comes from India.

But should I even care about countries that I have no associations with? Should I spend that extra minute worrying about the people in Sudan? How much worry can I fill my brain with before it explodes?

Well, there is the notion that we are only using like ten percent of our brain, some say it's an urban myth.  But if it's true, than we can think and worry about all kinds of things at the same time.  You can worry about your waistline and at the same second be worried about those in the world that have no food.  We are capable of a lot more than we think,

Also, we live in a world, not just a country.  The boundaries that we have created between our land and foreigners land is sort of made up, they are not naturally occurring boundaries.  Even just raising awareness by having a conversation or reading a blog about what happens in other counties helps.

We may or may not care about what happens in other countries, but you better believe that other countries care about what happens to us.  You will often find that foreigners know more about what is happening in this country than we do.  I noticed this when I went to India a few years ago.

I wasn't in India during any particular tragic event, I was simply confronted with severe poverty head on for the first time in my life.  I'm not just talking about people who don't have homes, but people who don't have limbs because Leprosy has spread in their poor neighborhoods.  I'm talking about people who walk around naked and sleep in tents on the side of the road. Small children with sad faces begged me for food and money.

I did care when I was confronted with it.  I did care for the short time that I was there.  However my relatives
who live there sort of stopped being shocked by it, they didn't care as much as I did.  They were desensitized as we are when we watch the news.  However this wasn't just the news for them, this was the situation in their backyards.

None of these poor people were my relatives, of course.  Of course I could plainly see that they were not one of us and I was not one of them.  But just to see that every day when I woke up in the morning made me a little more humble. It made me appreciate my life a little more.  It made me think about what I want to do with my life, that perhaps I should think about lifting at least a finger for another human being.

Although I sit here and do nothing for anyone really, and I'm concerned about myself first, I would hypothetically like to help battered women and children in India find refuge and education in order to recover and prosper.  I have no idea how I'm going to help make this happen but even having the thought, writing it down, and sharing it, helps I think.



I don't think it is only the responsibility of Americans to help the world, but we do owe the world something since we eat up like an enormous portion of the world's resources just by being alive and going to Starbucks.

Do you have to care about people suffering outside of our borders? You don't have to do anything.

It would be nice though, if we all did our small part.

nina

Sexy Tears?

I think about being sexy, and how it would be nice if I could perpetually exist in a sexy zone where I exude pheromones that make men fall to their knees.  I have probably spent thousands of dollars buying perfumes and hair products and make-up all in the hopes of being as sexy as I can be.

But now I've been told that even if I'm wearing the sexiest boots with the most sensuous black skirt, if my eyes water with tears, even tears of joy, I will negate all my sexy effort.

You probably worry about your clothes being sexy, your shoes, your hair, but what about your tears?

OK, you may have heard of this study they did recently that says that men are turned off by women's tears. The thing that women are asking is, who would first of all, fund such a study?  And for what purpose?  Secondly, are women trying to be sexy when they sob, are they even interested in sex when tears are flowing from their eyes?

Is it just me, or does it seem like everything in this world has to be sexy these days?  We can't just leave crying to be an emotional event, it has to be graded on the sexy scale.

Remember that song by Right Said Fred that went something like, "I'm too sexy for my..." and you could put anything in there.  I'm too sexy for my cat, too sexy for my hat, too sexy it hurts.  He was talking about models acting as if they were so sexy nothing could touch them, they acted as if they were too sexy for life itself.

Is that what we are supposed to be?

With the proliferation of Internet pornography, it is so easily accessible that almost every man divulges in it from time to time. I'm sure women do as well.  The images in pornography suggest that the actors are "too sexy" for their own good as well.  The women's boobs are too big, the men's packages are too large and everyone has a fake tan.

How are real human beings supposed to compare to this?

To top it off a lot of men I know watch Internet porn at least once a day.  How is a real woman supposed to compete with a quick fix like porn that is infused with unreal bodies?

The truth is we men and women, are not always sexy.  We do things on a regular basis that are not sexy at all.

Why are we expected to live by a standard that even our tears should be evaluated as sexy or not?

They say that men think about sex every like six seconds or something.  I think this may be an urban myth as well, and men are not thinking about sex as often as we are told.  I mean how would they get any work done? How would they have a conversation or concentrate on anything else in life?

Why don't they do a study about how men's obsession with sex makes women cry?

It is true that evolutionarily the people who have evolved are the ones that have procreated the most or the best, but we are more than an evolutionary explanation.

However if you paid attention to all the images we see on television, magazines and other media outlets, it's not like you could tell that we are anything but sexual beings.

Yet the real question is, with all this talk about sex, how much sex is the average person having?  In the beginning of any relationship sex is probably pretty regular.  But once you have been with someone over the course of some time, sex becomes less and less frequent.  I think that the average person, whether married or not, is not having tons and tons of sex on a regular basis.

Why is life so much less sexy than we want it to be?

Probably because we are slaughtered with the idea that life is supposed to be sexy, and when our life or our partner doesn't live up to some bizarre ideal we start to feel less sexy.

After all, the real measure of whether someone is sexy is whether or not they feel sexy.  It's hard to feel this way when you can't live up to the sexy standards of the universe.  And I think that half of sexy is self-esteem.

When I'm crying, I don't want someone to necessarily get excited, I want love, companionship, all the other things that come with a relationship.  Although I know for a fact that the study needs to be evaluated because many people have had sexual intercourse after a very emotional outbreak that included tears.

I happen to find a man crying to be very sexy.  I think it's beautiful to see anyone release real feeling.

Another problem with this study is that it is going against the idea that we as human beings are allowed to experience and share our pain with each other.  This is especially difficult for men to do, so I understand why tears might not turn them on, but at the same time, as a culture we need to help men get in touch with their tears.  I'm sorry if that sounds corny.

So ask yourself this:  Are you too sexy for your tears?

nina

Crazy Killing

OK, I have a problem with the media coverage of this Arizona shooter. Allegedly he is mentally ill.

Let me ask you this?  When was the last time you heard of a mad man with a gun shooting people?  It's been a while right?  Mostly, the people who shoot other people are "sane."  Or to be more exact, they don't suffer from any known mental illness.

However why is it that when one man is mentally ill and makes a commotion by killing all these people, now there are articles all over the place about how to detect if someone is mentally ill?

I think it's a lot more important to detect if someone is violent rather than if they are mentally ill.  Perfectly sane people beat their wives, beat their children, get into bar fights, and then we are shocked when they shoot someone with a gun.

The percentage of people who are mentally ill who will actually harm another person are probably the same as the percentage of people who are sane that will harm another individual.  In fact I can bet you that most crimes are committed by perfectly sane people.

So how do you detect whether someone is gonna pull out a gun and kill you?  You can't really.

I mean if we are talking about people you don't know, complete strangers killing you, there is no real way to tell.  But if it is someone you know, there are always signs.  I don't know what those signs are, I don't hang out with violent people, but I assume that they have something very eerie about them that suggests that they may turn on you any second.

You know that guy that killed John Lennon and the guy that tried to kill Reagan were both obsessed with the book Catcher in the Rye.  Perhaps we should ban this book now, because it is narcissistic and shows a main characters who only cares about himself.

The thing is, that would be an absurd thing to do.  We cannot psychoanalyze killers with our pop-psychology.

Killers are all crazy.  It is crazy to kill.

Whether or not they have a "mental illness"  is irrelevant.  The act of killing itself is an insane act.

Just because every now and then a mentally ill person kills, does not mean that all mentally ill people are killers.

I may have a partial viewpoint about this because I have a mental illness. But I guarantee you that most of the people that I have met who suffer from mental illnesses are much more likely to hurt themselves rather than hurt anyone else.

The thing is that people like to either romanticize or demonize mental illness.  Either he's so crazy he's a genius or he's so crazy he's dangerous. But mostly, mentally ill people are oddly normal.  We are your waitresses, your teachers, and even doctors.  We are your autistic children, and even your presidents have suffered from mental illness.

Don't write us off just yet, we are your friends.

nina

Embarrassment

What's your most embarrassing moments growing up? I'll tell you mine.

Well first of all this was beyond embarrassing, it was hurtful.  When I was in kindergarten I had a sweating problem of some kind, and these kids would chase me around the schoolyard yelling, "Stinky Nina."  I guess you can imagine how devastated I was that this was happening.  I don't remember how terrible it was, I think I sort of blocked it out, but I can imagine the psychology of someone who is being teased in this way over and over.

The second incident happened in like third grade I think.  It was my friend's birthday party and she was one of the cool kids so I was really excited to go and I really wanted to impress her.  So the thing is, I had to take a gift and my mother decided that she would not buy me anything brand new.  She had bought this cooler, yeah a cooler you would take on a picnic, an actual cooler, that she thought would be a perfect gift.

It was huge.  It was the biggest gift at the party.  Everyone was staring at it and staring at me.  "Nina, we'll open your gift last because it's the biggest!" my other friend shouted.  I couldn't look at her or anyone, I wanted to die.  I cringed as my friend opened her normal gifts from her other friends.  Not only was I the only person of color at the party I was the only person with a cooler.  Everyone else bought her cool stuff, I got her something she could cool stuff in.  It was tragic, it was the end of my social life as I knew it.

Finally when they got to my gift, everyone was sooo excited to open it.  She slowly unwrapped it and was like, "It's a cooler."  She didn't know what to say.  Everyone kind of looked at me a little funny. Even her mother said something like, "You got her a cooler?"  Her mother's friend had gotten my friend really awesome like teen magazines and all this cool stuff and she was like forty.  My gift wasn't even cool enough for a forty year old, I was mortified.

The third most embarrassing thing to happen to me as a kid was when I tried out for the school musical when I was fifteen.  I was a loser freshman and decided that I wouldn't try out for the chorus like a normal person with no talent whatsoever would, instead I decided to try out for the role as the main character.  I don't remember what the play was or what the name of the characters was, which is indicative of how much I studied for this part before going on stage in front of a bunch of talented people.

For starters I had forgotten how to read music from my trumpet playing days, so I when I practiced singing I just sort of made up a tune in my head.  Did you hear what I said, I made up a tune?  I was the stupidest little freshman that ever existed.

I went up there and in my high pitched voice, I stared singing words that no one could make out to a tune that I had made up.  The director of the play stopped me.  "I'm sorry," he said.  "I don't know which song you are singing."  I was more than mortified this time.  I told him which song, and I began singing, my own made up tune to these words that I was slaughtering with my high pitched horrible voice.

I saw a few people in the corner of my eye smile in this way that they couldn't believe what was happening.  I wasn't sure what was happening.  I went through the rest of the audition like a zombie.  I couldn't follow the dance steps for the dancing part, I didn't know how to inflect for the reading part where the main character was speaking.  All in all it was a travesty.

I have no lesson to give you here, I have no idea what these moments taught me.  I do know that I would never want to relive them.  I would never want my worst enemy to live them.

Thank god that's all over.

nina

"Happiness is just an Illusion, Filled with Sadness and Confusion"

"One person is grateful and appreciative in life when they have many a struggle to deal with; another person constantly compares themselves to others and is discontent in life when they seemingly have nothing to complain about- thoughts on what provokes either tendency?"

Why are some people happy and some people not?  I would like to say it is the way you are raised, but I wasn't raised to be happy, I was raised to be successful.  When I was a kid if I told my dad I wanted to be a teacher or an actress or something, he would say, "No, you will become a doctor." As you can see that method really worked well with me. I somehow turned out to be the kind of person that is constantly striving for happiness.

I am amazed sometimes at people whose life seems smooth sailing, yet they are not sailing through it.  It could be that we don't really know what happens behind closed doors.  But there is also an element that if you haven't had hard times in your life while growing up they are harder to take when you do grow up.

I mean come on, some people should just be happy.  I mean I don't know, who am I to judge?  I grew up pretty privileged.  But then the shit began to hit the fan in my life as a teenager.

The first sign that it was all over was when I had my year of zits when I was sixteen.  I'm not even kidding, it was so tragic for me.  I was so vain and then suddenly I couldn't look in the mirror without cringing.  Thank god the acne went away without scars.

Then, my father started actually going blind.  That was the worst part of my life.  Of course it didn't help when my mother was falsely accused in a lawsuit.

Things were actually a lot worse then I'm making them sound because I'm just not gonna tell you the really personal details, but it got ugly, very ugly.  But I was always, even in my darkest moments, I had this weird optimism that everything was gonna be alright.    I used to tell my parents that anyone living in the slums of Detroit who saw their beautiful home would laugh at their problems.  My parents didn't think it was funny.

Did we have a lot of problems, yeah, but we also had a lot of support and love.  We stood by each other, and that's why I can get through shit, because I know my family and friends always have my back.

I carried this optimism with me during 911.  I know, I've heard, that people in the suburbs were upset.  I was in New York when it happened and I didn't cry until about a week after it happened, when I went to a candlelight vigil for some of the victims.  I wasn't on medication at the time, so I can't blame that for me not being completely sensitive to what was happening.

There was only one thing I knew:  I had to survive.  I had just been diagnosed with Manic Depression at the time and was ignoring the diagnosis, but knew in the back of my head that I was a vulnerable person.  I didn't go down to the site until months later, until I knew I was ready.  I was so strong, I'm so proud of myself.  Of course a few months later I did have a mental breakdown that could have been partly caused by the stress of living in a place that was so scared and depressed.

But let me tell you something, you would have been strong too.  You may have later fallen down on your knees too.  You don't know what you are capable of until you go through it.  But I haven't answered the question as to why some people crumble while others soar.

I had a friend who walked from the site on 911 and was so badly covered with soot that people were staring at him and crying.  He lost some people, but he didn't lose himself.  He was one of the most jovial people I knew during that time.  

I think that if you were watching all of this on T.V. and you were more upset than I was, you should evaluate some things.  First of all why are you so upset about something that doesn't directly affect you?  If you lost someone during 911 that's a different story, you the right to be as upset as you fucking want to be.  But if you are just upset because of images you saw on T.V. you should think about how the media is affecting your brain.

I think the media wanted you to be upset so you kept tuned in.  I think the government wanted you to be upset so you would support their wars.  Yes, it was a tragedy and since anyone at all could have been a target, we were all targets.  But if you couldn't get through your day without weeping or having some kind of panic because of it, think about what you were really upset about.

I guess the question is, why did some people sail through 911 and some people fell down?  I don't really know, as you can probably tell at this point.  I am exploring the idea with you, not for you.  I think I did both, I was strong until a point and then some other stuff happened in my life and it was all too much for me.  I don't blame the terrorists alone though.



You know a lot of people with Mental Illnesses who don't take their medication end up on the streets.  That could have been me.  I made it because I had love in my life whereas other people who did not, may not have had that kind of support.

Was their something inside me that made me get through it all and still I hope come out OK?  Yeah, I have a very strong belief in the good.  You can call it god if you want, you can call it a positive force in the universe, you can call it godot.  In the play, Waiting for Godot, God comes to these guys in the form of people while they are waiting for some supreme being to arrive.

God didn't show his face to me, instead there were gods all around me, including my doctors and therapists, that saved me.  And some of it is luck as well.  I have a disease that happens to have a cure: medication.  There are many people who cannot get through their lives because they have a disease that has no cure.

But what about those people with nothing to be upset about?  I think that they have too much time on their hands to be upset about little things because they don't have to concentrate on anything real.  They are petty and small and probably don't deserve happiness.

I don't mean to be mean, but come on.  If you've got it all, at least be happy.  Do it for the rest of us, if not for yourself.

And if you've got some troubles, and you can't get through it, remember somebody has it worse than you and they are getting through it.

nina

Adult Content

Ummm, is it just me or do you not feel like an actual adult sometimes?  I swear it was just yesterday that we were playing with our friends, laughing our heads off at nothing, and ignoring our parents.

I mean most likely you are not depending on your parents for much anymore, but why do I sometimes dread that phone call from them, the one where they ask you all these questions about what you are doing with your life?  Why is it harder to ignore them now then it was then?

The other day, I even told my father how much money I had in my bank account.  I don't think I should do that anymore.  He told me I was spending too much.  I don't necessarily think he's right, but he's a tiny bit right.

However, when does all this stop being their business?  I'm in a little bit of a different situation than most people because as a full fledged adult, I lived with my parents for like four years. It was a long four years and I just moved out.  We are all still getting used to this.

I love my parents to death, but we have to understand that there are boundaries.

They actually don't read my writing.  I'm dreading the day when they do read my novel or this very blog.  They are going to be soooo  irrationally upset and they are going to make me irrational and upset.  I will act like a bratty kid.  I knew it would happen one day though, with my writing, I knew one day they would be ridiculously inflamed by it.  I was just hoping I'd be rich and famous by then.

Is it just me or do all of your relatives give you an inferiority complex?  This partly may be unique to the Indian culture, I don't know, I only have Indian parents.  But the questions after questions become so mundane.  When are you getting married?  When are you gonna have a real career?  What is this writing thing?  If you are gonna write can't you write a children's book like Harry Potter, the woman who wrote that is richer than the Queen of England?  Etc.,etc., etc.

I don't write or read children's literature, but I still feel like a child on occasion.  In general, don't you still feel kinda young?  I mean, however old you are, don't you feel like you are a kid sometimes?  Don't you want to play and nap and have recess?

When exactly did I become an actual adult?  Was it when I started college, 'cause I was naive, innocent and green then.  Was it when I graduated from undergrad and ventured out on my own to D.C. knowing no one and having nothing?  Was it when I graduated from grad school with a completed novel that was my thesis?  At what point did I stop having my childlike innocence?  

I don't think I have lost my innocence completely.  I have lost a little bit of it, maybe even a huge chunk of it, but I still have a childlike wonder about me.  I try not to take everything too seriously.  I know there are things that are serious, too serious, but even those I take with a grain of salt.  I am an adult, but I haven't killed the kid inside me.

We kids are gonna rule the world pretty soon, you know.

John Mayer put it very elegantly, "One day our generation, is gonna rule the population."  Is it just me, or do you have trouble actually seeing that happen?  Imagine someone you went to high school with becoming president.  There was one chic I went to school with who I know will make it big someday, but even that seems crazy to me now.

It's crazy to me that people that are in their thirties will be the movers and shakers of our time.  It wasn't that long ago that we were pinning our jeans to create a "tapered" look.  I mean come on, I used to wear shoulder pads for no apparent reason.

I am aware that fashion mistakes don't define an era, yet I'm just saying that my generation doesn't seem "adult" enough to run this country, or this world.

But we will.  I mean we are all gonna be forty soon, if we haven't turned that already.  Forty, for godsakes, I thought of that as so damn old.  I mean it's so strange to me that people my age will be running the churches and temples and Gurdwaras.  Aren't we gonna change something when we do have power?

Or are we gonna become like our parents generation?  Are we gonna keep the status quo going?

Probably.

But hopefully I'm gonna personally try not to turn into my parents.  Although the things that my parents did were beyond what most adults can accomplish because they were immigrants.  Imagine going to like China, starting your life over not knowing anyone or anything and making it there, having a better lifestyle than most Chinese people.  That's what my parents did when they came from India to America.

My parents are great people, they really are, and I owe them my life, but I want a different life than they had.   I want to be a different kind of adult.  We all want to do better than our parents generation financially, but how about emotionally?

I just want to be more content than my parents are.  I want to be happier.  I may not be richer than them or live in a bigger house than they do, but I want to appreciate my life more than they did.

They are not unhappy, but my parents in particular were always concerned about everyone else's happiness other than their own, they still are.



I need to be a kid again in order to be the kind of adult I want to be.  Look I still have bills to pay, I have student debt that would alarm most people, I have career issues, and lack of boyfriend issues, and issues with my very sanity.

But still I want to forget about all that and just be.  It's not easy, I wake up at like five every morning first with this alarm in my head about what my day will bring.  Sometimes I get up and try to write it away.  Sometimes I go back to sleep and try to dream it away.  Either way, I'm still scared of what the day will bring.

However, much like you, I'm trying to be more of the kind of adult I can respect.  I work hard, damn hard.  It's hard to express my feelings and thoughts in public every day.  It's hard to even come up with feelings and thoughts to share.  But I do it because I have to.  I have to because this is the nature of my work.

I know you work hard, you dream hard, and you have fallen hard at at times.  We all have.  They say a girl  becomes a woman when she gets her period.  I would agree with that.  I think a person becomes an adult the minute they can bear children and have the ability to take responsibility for their actions.  However there are people who are past Menopause who do not to act like adults.

It's all relative.

When you are an adolescent you are really in the process of becoming an adult.  When you are an old person sometimes you regress and forget you are an adult.  I am fully grown now.  Yet still sometimes I want to play pretend.  I want to pretend like I'm a totally different person than I am.  A person who has all the things I long for.  Sometimes I feel like I am pretending like I'm an adult.  I can't believe the acrobatics I have to do just to survive.

To enter certain websites you have to be an adult.  Some of these websites are nasty, some of them are informative. I may not put a warning label on this website, but I do think you have to be an adult, a real adult to understand what I'm saying, in general.

The adult in you knows what I'm saying.  The kid in you would rather go outside and play.

Let's find a balance.

nina