Recently, I’ve found myself having long, in-depth conversations with people who are significantly younger than me. We catch up, we gossip, we philosophise, we joke around; it’s just like any conversation I might have with a friend who is closer in age to me, but the reaction that I keep getting from the thirty-somethings is "What could you possibly have in common with teenagers?"
The answer is simple – everything. I know these kids and have known them for years. I know their parents and their teachers, they know my parents and my kid and my friends. We have a shared background, and the things that we’ve done… well, maybe we didn’t do them together, maybe I did them 20 years earlier than they did, but it doesn’t make the experience any less paralleled.
See, when I was growing up, one of the most important lessons that I learned was that age doesn’t matter when it comes to compatible friendship. I can be just as comfortable talking with someone who is 80 as someone who is 8. As long as they are intelligent enough to keep up their side of the conversation and to keep it interesting, there’s nothing else that really should matter.
I suppose it’s really more like my extended family. I was downright thrilled to see one of my oldest friends (25 years and counting) who I haven’t seen in 3 years, but I was just as excited to catch up with the girl who I adore and don’t get to see very often, to reconnect with the boy who has been gone to boarding school for the entire school year and thinks that Spawn should come and join him there, to be invited to the 21st birthday of a young man whose company I greatly enjoy… These are my brothers and sisters, my cousins and aunts and uncles more than simply people I know in passing. These are the people who I sit down with and it feels like no time has passed, even if it’s been years since our last conversation.
What we have all learned is that the value of personality isn’t dependent on being the same age, that peer groups encompass shared backgrounds and similar experiences. Now that I’m in my 30′s, I can be that "adult" on par with the adults that I, as a teenager, related to, who helped to shape my outlook and perspective. Though I may not be actively helping to mold these kids, I am giving them a chance to be a part of a broader scope than most of their friends and age-mates.
I think that it’s rather sad how so many adults can’t grasp the concept of having a teenager be a peer, or that, somehow, those teenage peers are so unusual as to be out of scope for many. We have this definition of friendship that broadens as we get older. "Adult", and therefore, friend-worthy starts at 18 or 21 or 25, regardless of how old you are, but before someone hits that threshold, they’re considered to not be compatible. I have no such restrictions, and though I don’t seek these young people out for nights on the town, it never stops me from having meaningful conversations at parties or events or even just running into them on the street.
Fundamentally, it’s not about age, it’s about life experience. Some of these kids have more life experience than many of the adults I’ve known, who live a tedious, mediocre life. Not only are they going to be exceptional adults in a few years, they are already exceptional people.
I am honored to count them among the people I care for NOW, rather than feeling some weird societal pressure that they won’t be worthy of being considered peers until they have a few more years under their belts. Their ages don’t matter to me, and for those who have determined that it should, my sympathy. Really, you’re the ones missing out.