May 2019
Assembled from works by Ryan P. Kinney
By Elandra Fritzsche with original content
There is a game I play
It is one I play all by myself
With a million other players
It is called Adulting
The game is simple
All you need to do is follow the rules
All you need to do is listen
All you need to do is
Grow up
Grow up
It is something people tell you to do all your life
Grow up and act your age
Even when you are supposed to still be a child
Grow up
At 14 I started playing the game
Partially convinced that growing up meant
Getting the hell away from my parents
And being absolutely certain that if I did not
One of us would be dead
For years I played the game
Earned my keep
Took a wife
Bought a house
A mortgage
An expanding weight line
I followed the rules
I played the game
I fixed my house
I worked hard
I did the things that married men should routinely do with their wives
I had grown up
But I wanted to be lost
The game was not as fun as I thought it would be
I wanted to remember what it was like to be found
But found within myself
They say that all rules are meant to be broken
And so breaking them is just what I did
Slowly
Quietly
Secretly
On weekends I smashed TV's
Torched Barbie dolls
I kept my toys in my closet
My comic books in heaps
I swept the remains of broken rules away
As to keep them hidden
For awhile
Then suddenly
I was gone
To find myself
Among the ashes
Of the rules I had broken
And burned to keep hidden
To find that the world covered in ashes
Was the world full of color that I knew before the game was played
I looked for a way out of the game
And so back to school I went
The toys came out of the closet
My comic books worn like bandanas
Hanging from my back pocket
But once again after the time had passed
They wanted me to play the game
To grow up
I had tried
It didn't work out very well
Give me my childhood
The freedom I had had before the game was played
Give me all the things that come with it
But please don't make me play
I do not follow the rules
I do not like them much
This is not a game I want to play
I lost the first round already
Do I have to play again?
By Elandra Fritzsche with original content
There is a game I play
It is one I play all by myself
With a million other players
It is called Adulting
The game is simple
All you need to do is follow the rules
All you need to do is listen
All you need to do is
Grow up
Grow up
It is something people tell you to do all your life
Grow up and act your age
Even when you are supposed to still be a child
Grow up
At 14 I started playing the game
Partially convinced that growing up meant
Getting the hell away from my parents
And being absolutely certain that if I did not
One of us would be dead
For years I played the game
Earned my keep
Took a wife
Bought a house
A mortgage
An expanding weight line
I followed the rules
I played the game
I fixed my house
I worked hard
I did the things that married men should routinely do with their wives
I had grown up
But I wanted to be lost
The game was not as fun as I thought it would be
I wanted to remember what it was like to be found
But found within myself
They say that all rules are meant to be broken
And so breaking them is just what I did
Slowly
Quietly
Secretly
On weekends I smashed TV's
Torched Barbie dolls
I kept my toys in my closet
My comic books in heaps
I swept the remains of broken rules away
As to keep them hidden
For awhile
Then suddenly
I was gone
To find myself
Among the ashes
Of the rules I had broken
And burned to keep hidden
To find that the world covered in ashes
Was the world full of color that I knew before the game was played
I looked for a way out of the game
And so back to school I went
The toys came out of the closet
My comic books worn like bandanas
Hanging from my back pocket
But once again after the time had passed
They wanted me to play the game
To grow up
I had tried
It didn't work out very well
Give me my childhood
The freedom I had had before the game was played
Give me all the things that come with it
But please don't make me play
I do not follow the rules
I do not like them much
This is not a game I want to play
I lost the first round already
Do I have to play again?
