I Won’t Grow Up
Words and Music by Benny Mann
June 2002

The musical theme for “I Won’t Grow Up” was on my mind for quite some time. I think I started pounding it out in the winter of 2001. I tried drafting some rough lyrics then but they never really became a tight and natural fit with the riffs and song structure as I had conceived it. Something just remained incomplete. I put the project on hold.

In the spring of 2002 I again tried the song, this time with a band I was attempting to form called Turnpike. The bassist and I disagreed on verse and chorus durations and I felt the changes were antithetical to what I was trying to accomplish with the tune. As a result, I dropped the idea. Ironically, a couple weeks later I dropped the band as well.

I still, however, held a strong belief that the song had promise so I kept working with it hoping that if I kept at it, the muse might eventually grace me with clarity.

In June of 2002, the lyrics for “I Won’t Grow Up” finally crystallized. It was the end of my first full year of teaching middle school music. I had witnessed some truly bizarre and confounding behavior from my students in those two semesters. I would tell people that no one had ever told me that I would have to say things to my pupils like “Please stop running into that wall”, or “Please do not light that student’s hair on fire” and even “Stop licking your chair”. I must admit, however, that while I may have been charged with maintaining order in my classroom, I often times found myself laughing uncontrollably at my students antics, though be it from behind the dark storm-cloud of my disciplinary facade. In the end, I could truly appreciate the value of the wild behavior before, even as I was reining it in.

The idea of cherishing the outright silliness and rambunctious nature of childhood is something that has always been an important concept to me. Combined with the feeling in the air that June, the right lyrics just flowed one Saturday morning. This song is meant to be a joyous and triumphant declaration that no matter how old and responsible a person might be forced to become, it is unhealthy if not unjust to ever truly molt your “young feathers” completely.

In the words of Dr. Seuss “Adults are obsolete children.”