Childhood is like water in a dam: you ceaselessly beg for it to be over with, to pass through the threshold of the “age of independence” and the “age of I-can-do-whatever-I-want’s”,  for it to at least speed up, to just be over with those long years that slowly and imperceptibly build like water dripping behind a dam.  You don’t notice the rising water level until it fills to the brim and then spills, releasing all of those memories and childhood wishes into unexplored territory. As soon as the water rushes over the brim, breaking the dam you had always wished would break, you realize how much its absence will affect you— you realize you should have appreciated that lake the dam created before the water slipped from its grips. 
      Standing at the threshold of childhood and adulthood, in my last days before I graduate high school and start rushing into unknown territory, I realize that most of my childhood, I wanted that dam to break.  Now that I am approaching it, I wish that the water would slow down, just a little, just enough so that I could appreciate it for its clarity, for its comfortable presence, for the depth of its beauty.  Every year, month, week, day, hour, minute, and second leading up to this point have seemed to take an eternity, but now it seems as if that childhood dam had filled in a fraction of a millisecond.
       When I was six years old and in Kindergarten, I was in a cheer league that practiced at the local middle school.  It is one of my most vivid memories: my mom holding my hand, walking me up to that huge school with all of its looming halls and adolescent secrets.  As I looked upon the green and gold lockers in awe, she bent down to my height and whispered, “You’ll be here in sixth grade!”  That seemed absolutely unfathomable: sixth grade is even older than fifth grade, older than the biggest kids at my elementary school.  What happened in between now and then? How did the water build so quickly?  How do I still feel like that little girl who thought of sixth grade as a magical prospect and not as a reality?  It is a scary thing, how quickly time passes— it sounds cliche, but it is the truest of truths.  When I was six years old, a second was equivalent to a year, and now, a year is equivalent to a second.  Before I knew it, I was in sixth grade, walking those halls I never thought I’d reach.  Before I knew it, I was beginning my senior year of high school, anxious to escape another set of halls.  Now, after seven months (seven seconds), I wish the water would just stand still, just for another small moment. 
     Will the rest of my life progress as quickly as my first eighteen years?  Yes, it will— even If I don’t notice the time passing until it has.  This sensation is so strange, how I can almost see myself at forty, wondering where that anxiously excited high school graduate escaped to.  Time will pass, the water will build— so don’t rush it, make it useful.  Kayak on the water, pull resilient fish from its shimmering surface, dive head-first from heights that make you nervous. If you just let the water flow, if you appreciate the lake while it’s still there, you will be ready to let that dam break when it is time.