This post is the saddest thing you may ever read about growing up. I'm not even kidding. There's no tragedy. Nobody dies. Nobody breaks anything. It's almost casual, this saddest thing. On the surface it's even cute, but the depth of pathos underneath could well swallow you whole.
My neighbor has a kid I'll call Max because that's his name and it should be illegal to give another name to a kid already called Max. He's a five-year-old boy and his mom, in an effort to spend less time with five-year-old boys, enrolled him in an after-school magic class. Yesterday he asked to stop going.
"It doesn't really seem like magic," he said. "It seems more like lying."
That's it. Read it again if you must, then follow those words back and let them inform you of everything that boy felt between learning he was taking a magic class and actually taking the class.
A better blogger than I would use this as an opportunity to explore the differences between expectation and reality or, at the very least, the bittersweet journey that is growing up, but me? I'm satisfied just listening to the "whomp" that is your happiness being clubbed to death.