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All Those Kids
All Those Kids
The year was 10010, and all citizens would be kids. This new era began after the secret revolution of boys and girls, and then in a sudden strike. They would no longer suffer being young or being someone’s young kid. This is because all citizens would be kids. To prevent having aged outlooks, the children would keep growing until the day before the unholy age of eighteen. There would be no old-fashioned adult looks. For those who had been eighteen already, engineers had re-programmed their genetics so that their looks and memories are rewinded to young adults. However, the adolescents were so well protected that some of them soon felt… they lost some other protection. For example, a small number of people soon realized the lack of adult companies. Also, asking others’ age will be offensive. That’s why there were so many words, including “old” and “young”, considered serious assaults. Some people think it makes sense: both later adults and young adults are adults.
The midnight of autumn woke the girl up in dreams of ghosts. She looked in a large useless mirror, her same look for twenty years. She felt someone patting and calling her in the supposedly empty room. It is probably another hallucination, she thought. No, this one is special. It is piercing her heart. She took some high-tech medicine to stay away from visions, but no, her disorder went inside her too much, too long. She heard a man and a woman.
“No way, you should not stay this young. You should be thirty-eight now, a total grown-up, but you are still so… young.”
“Tell me, honey, what happened to you and why do I keep seeing teenagers in this place? Even a teenage council? Not a single adult?”
“This is so unnatural. All those Kids! ”
The girl knew how much she wanted her parents back. It had been a hard decision. She wanted all adults to be equal but she never thought she would be separated from her parents.
Are they my parents now? She thought. Parents of the adults were no longer parents because they are equal to their formal kids. Adults cannot parent adults, she thought, the law blocked us.
She regretted being equal to others, for so long.
Depression and isolation confused her into a blackout.
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I have heard sad stories about young adults having fewer status and opportunities because of their age, not their abilities. I understood that one's ability is not always proportional to years of experience. I have also heard about conflicts between young adults and their parents. While writing, I found a ‘resolution’ for both ‘issues’: What if people of all ages are equal? Things may be outdone because everyone would be a kid.
This is my set piece in Kurt Vonnegut’s style when he was writing “Harrison Bergeron”, with a third-person point of view and setting in the beginning. I played with symbolism (objects or people having another meaning that is not just on the surface). The girl in my story stands for regret of having no adults around and her parents symbolize the confusion of the world. Including the emotional meaning of words, the connotation is seen in parts like “The midnight of autumn…” and “old-fashioned adult looks”. Autumn suggests sadness and being old-fashioned negatively suggests maturity. My favorite part is when the girl’s parents (hallucination) said the girl is young, despite the law against commenting on another person’s age. This is a detail that some readers may miss while reading.