Old Soul

I’m an old soul.

I know this because I was told so innumerable times when I was a child. Like, a young child. Not a teenager. By then I was being called a hellion. Or a faggot, depending on who did the talking.

Old soul was what old people called you when you were sitting quietly and being polite, which were the only two things—aside from eating everything on your plate at dinner—that they required of children. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, librarians. “You’re just an old soul,” they said. Or, “You must be an old soul.” Or, “Anybody ever tell you you’re an old soul?”

I always said no. Even if I’d heard it before, I told them no and that I didn’t even know what that meant. Then I left the room and went to be an old soul somewhere they couldn’t see and comment on it. To me, it was an insult, but to them, it was a compliment: a child that didn’t act like a child. A child that acted like a miserable old person. “Just look at you, you old soul.”

I think they said it so they wouldn’t have to acknowledge their role in making me that way. Their constant haranguing about every little thing: the way you sat at the dinner table, the way you held your fork or your spoon. The way you got excited about things you enjoyed. The way you asked for things you wanted or needed. Everything was another opportunity for correction. Sit up straight. Say “Please.” Say “Thank you.” No elbows on the table. Ask to be excused from the table. Push your chair in. In other words: stop being a kid. Stop acting your age. Start acting old.

And when you gave in, when you sat and said nothing and didn’t engage with them, they demanded to know what was wrong with you. Could you not speak? And if you replied that you didn’t have anything to say, that was disrespectful. The truth was disrespectful. It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

I figured people out early, and I guess that’s why they called me an old soul. I saw how they said one thing and meant something else. I saw how they said something and did the exact opposite. I saw, when you pointed those things out to them, how enraged they became. In those instances, I was “getting too big for my britches.” So I would go back to sitting and not engaging and when they’d calmed down, I became an old soul again.

I made a conscious decision to never become like them, and I would do whatever it took not to. But that kind of conditioning works, whether you want it to or not. It gets in there and you think it’s better to act older than you are and present that way. Just look at your parents’ yearbooks from the 1950s and 1960s. Those teenagers look like they’re in their forties! Then when I got to college but was still too young to drink, it was very important that I be able to pass myself off as someone of legal drinking age so I could get into the bars and clubs on weekends. And all that “old soul” shit worked. I don’t think I’ve ever had to show my I.D. to get into a bar. Being able to grow facial hair in the ninth grade helped, too, I guess.

And I’ve spent the last twenty-five years un-becoming an old soul. I’m not trying to pass myself off as younger, by any means. I’m cool with being old now, and I touched on it in an earlier essay, but I like to think I’m a young soul these days. My husband tells me I act like I’m thirteen, and I’d like to tell him that I act thirteen now because I couldn’t act thirteen then, but I don’t think he’d understand. And having to explain would age me and there I’d be again—an old soul, but not by choice.