Level 20

As 9:15 this morning, I had accumulated enough experience that I was no longer a mere teenager. Now I am twenty years old, starting a new decade, or maybe a new era, in my life.

I feel old.

In most pen and paper roleplayer games, or western RPG video games that ape their systems off D&D, level 20 tends to be the level cap. After that, new life experiences will no longer effect abilities. Going by that qualifier, I am done. I am who I am and will forever be.

Mass Effect 2 instead had the level cap be thirty. However after level twenty the amount of skill points afforded to the player seriously decreases: from two a level to one.

Though some might find this comparison to levels a case of overabstracting, I feel as if am faced with a truth. The amount I am able to learn at my age is considerably diminished, if not completely removed. My writing can improve, so can a lot of other things. But it's not like I can just pick up a new language now, and expect to learn it, like a child or even a lucky teenager can.

I also have to face the fact that I'm no longer a child anymore. As such, I have new responsibilities, and there are things I can no longer do.

I no longer have the hope of ever attending a prom. As of today, that experience is no longer afforded to me. That ship has forever sailed, though my chances of ever attending did diminish when I skipped my senior prom two years ago. (I have regrets).

To that point some of the last people I know from my high school are graduating today. Argo is now to become a foreign entity to me.

I no longer have the ability to claim teenager culture. Justin Beeber and Miley Cyrus are no longer a part of my domain. I count this loss as a blessing.

I am now one less teenage anime fan. That means I'm still an anime fan, but I have to list myself among those old farts who still watch the original Mobile Suit Gundam, which I do, and yell at youngins for watching Naruto and shows with Moe girls in them.

If it wasn't before, liking lolicon would be extremely creepy at my age. Thankfully, I can count that as one of the things I don't fap to.

On that note being twenty does have it's perks. Or perk, as the case may be. I can now stay out past eleven in the state of Illinois. Apparently, that was illegal here, for some reason.

Yet, I still can't drink, gamble, or rent an automobile. Well, legally, anyways. I'm still in draft range too. I'll be for awhile.

In two years time, I'm going to be out of college, unless I go to graduate school. The chance to be a young fuck up is starting to slip away. Soon, I will have to get a job, and live life in the confines society.

Damn, am I old.

Yet, a strange thing has occurred as of late. As old as I am, I notice things that filled my childhood are now being peddled to youngsters.

Last weekend, the fourth Shrek movie was released. The original came out when I was eleven years old. Assuming that the movie was targeted to children who were my age, to tykes as young as three, no one who in the target demographic when the first movie came out is a child anymore.

Then you think about Toy Story. The first movie came out when I was five. For the second, I was nine. Next month, the third Toy Story movie will come out. At this point, some of the kids who saw the original in theaters a decade and a half ago have children, who will be begging to take them to sequel to something that was part of their parent's childhood.

Then you think about what ABC Kids is doing now, and it's just baffling. Nearly twenty years after the original broadcast, the original Power Rangers is being aired. Sure it has stupid new special effects added in. But it's still the same show that captivated me when I was three years old, 17 years ago.

Every Saturday I turn it on, and I'm reminded how old I've gotten. In retrospect, a lot of seems really stupid. Bulk and Skull antics especially, though I've noticed one or two parental bonuses from them. That the green ranger 5 parter seemed scary to me then is astounding to me now. That Zordon would choose a group of “teenagers with attitudes,” instead of say, a highly trained group of fighters, seems like a decision based more on marketing than out of the wisdom of a interstellar entity.

It's also gotten really easy to spot the cheapness of the whole thing. Like, I can tell the parts that the American producers did themselves from the stock footage they took from Super Sentai shows. I can also spot that the mechazord looks like cheap toy.

But somehow, somewhere in me, is still the kid who was in love with the damn cheap costumes, the giant robot, and the poor dubbing. (Well, at least until I see one of those damn stupid new effects plastered over my precious childhood.) I guess as old as I get, the kid in me won't die completely. Heck, for completionists sake, I'm probably going to go see the new Shrek movie and the Toy Story 3 as well.

Growing up, after all, is overrated.