What does Coming of Age mean?
The first time that I encountered the phrase "Coming of Age" was in the description of the movie " Breaking Away ". My father was watching the movie while it was on TV, and I had nothing better to do, so I watched the last half with him. While we watched the scene where Dave races against the Italian cyclists, my dad explained to me how Dave had built up this image in his mind of these glorious racers and had completely immersed himself in Italian culture, wanting to become one of them. When the Italian racers see Dave catching up to them, they jam his tires and he crashes. He's shocked, and has to reconstruct his perspective on everything in his life in order to recover. This setup and subsequent "punchline" (for lack of a better word) found in Breaking Away has stuck with me since then. In my mind, the words "coming of age" are tightly bound to this concept of the debunking of childhood ideals. Dave's obsession with these seemingly su