Youth can be like beer

For those who've never crossed the line, you'll never understand. For those who've yet to, but see it coming in the less distant future, you'd better dearly cling onto the diminishing remainder of your prized days. Sometimes, I really wish I could erase the line because being 21 isn't all cracked up to what it's supposed to be.

The thrust behind my theory lies with the concept of a rapidly expiring youth or rapidly expiring borrrowed youth at this moment. This is most certainly unlike the years which preceded enlistment, where we could drink from the fountain like beer guzzlers, taking every gulp for granted, not realising that nothing lasts forever. Sadly, not even beer. However, at this time, I can but unfortunately only muster an evaporating puddle, affording a sip at a time.

Before I take my sip, I'd stare into the puddle only to discover a decade of unspent youth, the numerous years of unachieved ambition or lack of them, as well as one lifetime thus far of meaningless laughter I so enjoyed, yet not ingoring the occasional highs. Then I swirl the puddle to create as many and lasting ripples as possible, to distort the image I see. It thus makes me re-evaluate whether I'd ever want to drink from it again, so I could do away with the glimpses. Guess that beer would do as fine. Yet as always, I assert that it is far from futile compared to those 2 damned years in the army.

Apart from Luke, university, which allegedly is a carefully controlled medium that cultures the 'time of our life,' awaits the rest of us in the forseeable future. My take on this is actually also my resolve of having as an explosive a blast as possible, not forgetting to strive equally hard for good honours. I hate it because I especially await university with such great anticipation, yet underneath it all, I know that as rewarding as it may hold out to be, it must end someday, a wee few years from now before the fountain runs dry. But hopefully again, not the beer! From then on would I have to give a shit about marriage, bringing the bacon home and other silly domestic commitments which I'd rather not think about. Incidentally, shelving the prospective mid-life crisis aside, we can always look forward to retirement which I am planning on right now; Central America(Bermuda, Mexico, Barbados, Jamaica and all you West Indies!) here I come! I'd prolly get plastic and a voice-box surgery to integrate into the Rastafarian community! Ooh baby I love your way, no woman no cry and invariably, red reddd wiiiinne... UB-40 all night long....

More seriously, I hope to one day fathom, in heart especially, what some older and in this instance, dead folk like Antoine De Saint-Exupery(author of The Little Prince) really mean by youth being something independent of age and only a state of mind(not a drunken haze of course).

-Kenneth Wong. Buy me a magnum bottle of Fosters this Christmas. Thats why I left my name.