My father subscribed to the old coffee mug adage, You don’t know anything until you’re thirty.
At ten years old, this infuriated me; according to coffee-stained bubble letters on the side of a little ceramic bucket, I was to remain in my lowly childhood ignorance for three times my current lifetime. I knew how to read and write, after all, and didn't that count for something?
That coffee mug’s been haunting me lately, as I count the final hours of my early twenties and try to remember back
when being good was like colouring crayon
inside thick black outlines
when I had more opinions (my father’s) about politics,
and less understanding
when sex was bad and alcohol worse and drugs
turned you crazy or criminal
when religion wasn’t shrapnel
Life since high school has been an exercise in unlearning. A part of me looks forward to thirty, when allegedly I will know something.

Photo by Joe Mabel
What belief or issue have you had a major change of heart about over the course of your life?







