Matters of Faith

This morning my husband called to tell me that he had heard an advertisement for an adult puppet show.  Now, it is beyond me as to why a grown adult would want to see a puppet show for any reason other than taking his or her son, daughter, niece, or nephew to an afternoon show, and it made me think of this passage from Agatha Christie’s Nemesis.  The character who is speaking is a headmistress at an all-girls school, and though she is speaking of the girls at her own school I think what she says holds true for many of today’s young men and women a like.

“It happens very often.  Espcially in the last ten or twenty years.  Girls are said to mature earlier.  That is physically true, though in a deeper sense of the word, they mature late.  They remain childish longer-childish in the clothes they wear, childish with their floating hair.  Even their mini skirts represent a worship of childishness.  Their baby doll nightdresses, their gym slips and shorts-all children’s fashions.  They wish not to become adult-not to have to accept our kind of responsibility.  And yet like all children, they want to be throught grown-up and free to do what they think are grown-up things.  And that leads sometimes to tragedy and sometimes to the aftermath of tragedy.”

I often wonder if this is what happens when a person is robbed of their childhood.  Are they subconsciously mourning innoncence lost at too early an age?