Any Age?

If you could be any age for the rest of your life, what age would you be? Write a multi-paragraph essay for your teacher identifying the age you would be and explaining why you would choose this age.
-Tenth Grade WASL Writing Prompt


"OK, so I have good news and better news for you," I say wearily to my last class of the day. I'm not feeling well, so I'm sitting down at a table at the front of the room. The usually-wild class is compassionately calm and receptive.

"What?" someone asks.

"Well, we're doing our last beginning-of-the-year thing today. That's the good news."

"Can't wait for the better news," one disgruntled ninth grader mumbles to his neighbor.

"Oh, right," I say, as I start to pass out the writing assessment. "The better news is that tomorrow I'm going to read you a story. You know, relaxing Friday storytime."

"So much better," they roll their eyes, passing the tests backward along the columns of desks.

"So here it is," I answer, sitting back down. "Here's the question. Who's seen 13 going on 30?"

A few girls slide their hands in the air. One snatches it down again, realizing she was thinking of some movie infinitely more cool.

"It's a good movie!" I say defensively. "Anyway, that's the deal here. If you could wake up tomorrow and be any age you want--for the next 65 years or so--what age would you choose?"

Squeals of delight coem unevenly as they realize the implications. Several start writing immediately.

"Hold on!" I cry. I know I'll have to read these later, and I have glanced down at too many of one number today. "Don't just write '21' right away. Think about it a little. Can you think of more than one reason? If not, you'll be pretty worried after you've written 'So I can drink' on your paper, and you have a one-sentence essay."

Some of them protest, but they all get to work. I consider their most obvious choice, thinking that it's madness. At 21, I had mounds of homework, a job that paid me next to nothing for some of the hardest work I've done (perhaps until now), and a bleak uncertainty about the future. I was grateful to enjoy this youthful lostness for a year and move on. Stay there forever? No, thank you.

Hours later, I am sitting at home and breaking one of the looser rules that I've made about teaching by reading their essays by candlelight in a pleasant, quiet living room. Grading at home often feels too much like homework. But I had glanced into them in the afternoon, and found these particular essays so interesting that I was willing to dip into them for sheer enjoyment's sake. Between baking cookies and watching a rerun of The Office, the essays provide some excellent diversion.

And once again, these assignments that I approach with such casual expediency ("Well, I guess I should get a writing sample. Here, this should be fine.") floor me by giving me real and honest glimpses into my student's hopes, dreams, fears, and passions. I barely know them now, only a week into school, and I have been dismayed to find myself thinking of them as a teeming mass of questions and needs, rather than individuals. As I read their essays, faces and voices come to the fore and, as usually happens, I like them more than I ever have.

I laugh when I see a student wants to be 19--a particularly awkward age for me--until he explains that 19 is the age that Mexican soccer scouts seek out up-and-coming players. Another wants to be a pro bowler, and feels that 21 is probably the best age to try for it. Several want families, and place their eternal ages in their mid- to late-twenties, allowing for comparative youth but plenty of relationship and responsibility. A few would rather simply be four or five, so that they can sleep as much as they want and be the smartest and strongest students in their elementary schools. One student coaxes me into letting him choose to be 300 years old; he explains that he wants to see what happens to the world in the next few hundred years. I envy his courage.

Several of them, scared away from the 21 stereotype, write that they want to be 22. This, they believe, is the ideal age. Finished with college, at 22 they would have excellent jobs, the beginnings of families, and the cars and homes of their dreams. They believe that the early twenties are times of wisdom and maturity, the golden "middle age" of life. The twenties are their paradise, a hoped-for era of freedom and pleasure.

Though unhappy with neither my twenties nor the shape my life is taking in this third decade, I do smile to see my own age flashing up from the page. I wonder what they would think if they knew, that life might hold things better than fast cars, more liberating decisions than purchasing alcohol, and more rewarding payment than an hourly wage that exceeds $10. They must not know that I am still seeking wisdom and maturity-that my ideal age is floating somewhere in the forties or fifties, when life settles a bit and relationships are rich and deep. Probably none of us will ever be quite satisfied with where we are, always hoping to push on a bit--to learn more, experience more, grow more.

"But I don't want to be one age forever!" cries one student, jabbing a period at the end of an impassioned essay.

Thank goodness we don't have to be. The joy is in the journey...