Something hit me last night: I'm twenty. Avoiding for the moment any sort of etymological description of the terminology, I feel in a more philosophical mood and as such want to muse on what it actually means now that I'm twenty.

I guess the first thing to admit is that I still regard myself as a teenager. Asked in an impromptu fashion how old I am, my mind will automatically leap for 'nineteen' before I stop to ponder that I am, in fact, older. Perhaps it was because the end of my teenage years came sat around in an [admittedly very nice] hotel room in the middle of nowhere in Canada or because I always seem to be a year behind with how old I am - it seems to take me a year to catch up and learn how old I am and by which time I near to start learning another number. Perhaps I should just start thinking I'm twenty one now and save a bit of time in the process. Regardless, I consider myself a teenager still.

But what does that mean? I mean, 'teenager' is perhaps synonymous with 'adolescent' and conjures up images of spotty-faced, hormone-driven youths wandering about the place in fashions that no other generation understands and listening to avant garde bands which to anyone else just sound like white noise only less tuneful. However, I fear that a teleological approach here shall be my undoing and so must look at it more objectively - how one is at thirteen is very different from how one is on the eve of their twentieth birthday (one might hope). Consider how much you've learnt [been taught and otherwise] in those seven years, how many things you've experiences and all the people you've met. I'm nothing like I was when I was thirteen at present and a good thing too - I've matured, y'see. Is it better, then, to split teenagers into two groups - pre- and post-sixteen; chosen as a year by which a young person gets basic rights and privileges and selon moi can be regarded a de facto adult -  or even further to regard being a teenager as a sliding scale alone which we all move at different speeds and to different ultimate degrees.

So, when I say that I still regard myself as a teenager I mean someone at the older end of the scale (I toyed with 'higher' but then found that a little condescending). However, I guess I still do the sorts of things that teenagers do - partying, learning et al. Would being a teenager then be better seen as a state of mind? I know of people that, whilst nineteen regard themselves as adults in direct contrast to my ideas. I realise to say that I'm young at heart would be the same, though does what I'm saying put me into the category of those desperately clinging to the past? I propose not.

A teenager (that is, adolescent not someone in their teens per se) should stop being a teenager once they gain basic rights - their rite of passage. Whether this be at sixteen [sex, leave home], seventeen [drive] or eighteen [drink, vote] is debatable but it should apply to one of them at least. However, the fact that it also applies to the nineteen year olds perhaps suggests that one can be mature with rights and privileges intact and still be a teenager. Thus, it's not a societally imposed when someone stops being teenager, but it is an adolescent. My point therefore is that although I fall outside the official boundaries by which I can be a teenager, I was already outside of the implicit boundaries the year (or up to three years) before that as I was, technically speaking, an adult. I had adolesced. Ergo, there ought (incidentally; one of my favourite verbs) to be a separate definition for a teenager past the watershed of adolescence that 'young adult' doesn't quite cover. One who is old, but still doesn't feel it. One who sees more in common with someone a year younger than with someone a year older. Without wishing to complicate this with clumsy taxonomy and with my extensive knowledge of lay Greek (though still wishing to show off a bit) I'd like to term this person a προενηλίκος [proenelikos - "pre-adult"].

Adulthood, then, according to me is self-defined though coming of age isn't. Everyone who reaches a certain age will become of age at that moment according to society. However, one chooses when one wants to regard themselves as an adult. There is a difference between being called 'sir' in a shop and seeing oneself as an adult just as far as the fact the bank sent me a letter addressed to Mr G. Morris when aged fifteen didn't make me an adult. To conclude with an idiom that I cling to rather fiercely - "Growing old is inevitable; Growing up is optional." I just don't think I'm ready yet.

Gaz out.