My inner child has gone and left no forwarding address. I'm not sure if he will come back this way again. I have been so busy and distracted that I never saw him go. However, until this moment, I felt certain he and I would be together forever as I always saw myself as a young person, with a child-like spirit and a simple, perhaps naive, way of looking at the world. Now it seems that things are noticeably different. I guess in most ways, I have finally grown up. This thought kind of makes me blue. You know who I blame for this? Justin Bieber. Well, maybe it's not his fault that I grew up, but it is his fault that I suddenly came to see myself this way.I used to say that I had the musical tastes of a 14-year-old girl. Michael Jackson, I stared gooey-eyed at his posters. Backstreet Boys, dreamy. Their songs used to send tingles up and down my spine. I even have an album by Don Johnson as his style and swagger from Miami Vice made me want to grow stubble and wear a pastel blazer with a T-shirt. But something inside me is different, and it has taken me until my mid-40s to recognize that I'm not a little kid. I finally recognize myself as an adult.
My realization occurred when I considered the brouhaha caused by the latest teen-beat craze du jour, Justin Bieber. I look at this little whimpy, slightly effeminate boy and scratch my head. I hear his strained, thin wheezing and tinny voice and I am lost. He is all manufactured image and no substance. The other day I passed by a radio playing one his songs and all the teenage girls were there singing out loud, swaying back and forth, all with their hands on their hearts and tears in their eyes. I really don't get it. Not this time. I miss my inner child and worry that I will be left alone from this point forward. Will he be back? I would guess never, but "The Biebs" told me to never say never.
