Growing Up in An Instant

by Jacob Waite

In the popular animated film Finding Nemo, the story of a young fish with a very overprotective father is told to us. If you haven't seen the movie, I will give a short summary to help understand the context. After an accident with divers, Nemo was taken far away from his father. In an attempt to get his son back, the father goes on a long journey across the ocean to “Find Nemo” as the title suggests. At the end of the movie, after this traumatic event in their lives, the father and son reunite. At this point his father noticed how his son had become much more sure of his abilities than he used to and more confident in general.

  The movie demonstrates the main topic of “growing up in an instant” and shows how much Nemo had progressed through his time away and is an example of how quickly an event or experience can change someone in a very short amount of time.

"Zolaria" is a short story written by Caitlin Horrocks about two young girls who are best friends. These two friends create an imaginary world together in their town named Zolaria. The story describes them and their interactions with this world and with the real world through elementary school. Later in the story, the main character's best friend is revealed to have cancer. While she is going through treatments, and missing more and more school, the two friends become distant and do not interact as much. After her friend dies, the author does not write anything more about the world of Zolaria. I think the author does this to show how the event of her death causes the main character to leave behind her childhood. This could be seen as an example of the transition from childhood to growing up and becoming more mature in a way. It also shows how this transition can be more of an event than a gradual experience. At the end of the story, when the main character has kids of her own, I feel that she is hesitant to let them grow up and does not want them to grow up the way she did

The short story, "Through The Tunnel" was written by Doris Lessing. It is about a young boy who, while on vacation, sets a goal for himself to swim through an underwater tunnel. He spent several days training to find and eventually get through the tunnel. While on this vacation, the boy would usually go to a main beach to swim but when he asked his mother to explore a rocky area, away from the main beach, he saw the boys swimming through the tunnel and that's when he set his goal. He would practice every day to hold his breath, and while doing this he consequently  became less attached or less dependent on his mother. After he eventually achieves his goal and makes it through the tunnel, both he and his mother notice how the way they interact with each other has changed.

All of these examples and stories support the idea that sometimes people can have experiences or events in their lives which cause them to change or mature. They show how growing up can be more like an event that happens or an experience that affects you rather than a gradual process.

In these examples of the idea of growing up, the result or effect that the experience has on the character is not always a negative thing. In the movie Finding Nemo, after Nemo makes it back to his father, he becomes noticeably more confident socially and in his own physical abilities. This is a great example of a positive effect that growing up might have on an individual. Alternatively, the experience that causes a person to “Grow up in an Instant” could possibly be a traumatic event that has some sort of negative effect on the individual. In the short story Zolaria, the character had an experience which later in life caused her to be hesitant and worried about her own kids and their futures. These examples help explain that growing up can be an event that has a positive or negative effect on the individual.