I don't want to fight about it, anymore

The older I get, the less likely I am to rebel. Is this a sign of getting old, or growing up?

When I was younger I pretty much rebelled against everything; my parents, teachers, society. No, I wasn't a troublemaker. And, I wasn't an instigator. However, if you told me to do something odds were I wasn't going to do it. I would fight you in my own passive-aggressive way

Why? I have no idea. I guess I figured it was the thing to do. It was my way of "being cool" or perhaps I was screwed up and had no idea what it was I was doing. I think that is more likely.

Now I don't rebel. Sure, there are somethings I don't go along with. I am not a PTA parent nor do I just say no in a Republican-we-don't-like-you-so-we-will-say-no sort of way. Nope, I don't do that.

I used to think that big corporations were the absolute evil of everything. Until I released that, sure they may be evil, but it is a necessary evil.

Odd that a cup of Starbucks coffee has me thinking this way. Starbucks was one of my top evils. I refused to frequent the establishment because I felt they took the idea of coffee shops and mainstreamed them. They did by the way. But the truth of the matter is, it wasn't Starbucks that I was angry with. It was my own lost youth.

I remember days with my two best friends, my brother Benjamin and Harold, sitting together in coffee shops in California. I remember playing chess, planing role playing adventures, getting tattooed for the first time, listening to the homeless guys outside telling of their woes, getting hit on by a skinhead (yes, this actually happened) and so much more.

It was a different time. One without a wife, kids, mortgage, car payment or any other thing that pulls on me today forcing me to "act my age."

That's what I am mad about. And, to be truthful, I am not even that mad. Although my youth is gone I have so much more going on today. I have my wife, my kids, my mortgage and all the other previously listed things that do indeed make me act my age.

Yet I still have a chance to tap into my youth and feel life coursing through my veins. A afternoon trip to a waterfall gave me the chance to shimmy down the side of a Big Horn mountain edge and capture images with my Nikon D3100.

An evening at The Black Tooth Brewery lets me chat with Harold and wish that Ben could be with us. Our conversations are different now, but not so different that if you look close enough you can see the two teenage boys hidden behind ourselves of today.

So, I am done fighting. I drink my Starbucks - the Anniversary blend is good incase you thought about buying it - and I enjoy my family and bills. Because in the end it is my perceived lost youth that I get angry about. But the truth is, it's still there, I just have to look a little harder.