#105 A Dolt
The mental process for writing this column started about two weeks ago when I was given the opportunity to guest lecture at a high school on “what it’s like to be a writer,” and furthermore, to give some advice on “adulthood.” Now first of all, let’s be honest; I have no idea what it’s like to be a writer, since I’m still unclear as to what makes someone a writer, and as any casual reader of my non-fiction can attest, I don’t feel like I match up with, nor do I subscribe to the modern American definition of “adulthood.”.
In my rarely humble opinion, I’d like to declare that if you write; you are a writer. I mean, I know we all like to make distinctions, like a subway employee is, apparently, a sandwich artist (which is supposed to sound better than being called a sandwich maker), but are there really distinctions for writing and being a writer? I mean, I write grocery lists that are more fun and interesting to read than half of the famous novels I’ve choked down in a desperate attempt to study the craft of writing. (Black beans and cilantro—no way!)…
At any rate, something struck me as I prepared to lecture 165 students, 33 or so at a time, for five straight classroom periods, about being an adult and a writer: What do I tell a room full of 14-17 year olds about what it’s like to be a writer, much less “an adult,” when I don’t believe that anyone out there is really “an adult”?
What is an adult? As far as I’m concerned, you become an adult the day your state decides that it can try you in a court of law as an adult, and beyond that, there isn’t a single correlative factor that every “adult” shares.
Some adults hold down steady jobs, but many do not. Some adults can control their substance abuse, but many cannot. And I have enough adult friends at this point that I feel very confident about making the following assertion: Most adults don’t feel like adults. After all, a lot of American adults pay other adults (who are licensed by older adults) to listen to them talk or complain about their adult problems, most of which are problems that have occurred since childhood, but failed to “magically go away” at adulthood. Ergo, most Americans do not feel like they are adults, yet we all believe in this American myth of “adulthood.”
Apparently, I was a big “hit” with the kiddos in Southern Oregon because I didn’t lie to their faces and pretend that things get easier when you become an adult—because they don’t. I think I also convinced many of them to embrace their youth and at all costs to avoid hypocrisy, because adult or not—no one likes or admires a hypocrite. I think former governors Rod Blagojevich and Elliot Spitzer can attest to this. I also lectured them on hegemony, and how it affects personal interactions as much as it affects unilateral politics—yeah, I’m that guy.
For me, becoming an adult means worrying about maintaining responsibilities with people you don’t really know and don’t really care about. An adult pays taxes without questioning the representation, worries about their income, bills, and unexpected costs like car repairs, and an adult, most of all, tries their best to stay off YouTube.
There are things that I wish more adults would consider: like how to sustain mental happiness and how to forgive themselves and others more often.
And I’d like to add to the “list of adulthood things that suck:” nose hair (and I’m told by older friends that up next is ear hair (I can hardly wait)), having to shave before important events, getting nervous when my heart skips a beat, because technically, men my age can suffer heart attacks, and “dressing my age.”
Things that make me still feel like a kid include: The fact that I still giggle when a fart sounds funny, the fact that I still think “that’s what she said” is an appropriate and funny response to any vague sexual euphemism that was made by a person who doesn’t usually make profane jokes, and the fact that I still get silly crushes on cute women that work in retail, and then fantasize about how I could and would ask them out, and then further fantasize about how I would blow it, since I still think farts sound funny, and I still…you get the point.
My ten year reunion for High School was this past weekend, and it was a very odd experience. Many of my former classmates seemed like adults; they were dressed to the nines, they had “careers” with companies that I’ve not only heard of, but ones that I actually support, and a lot of my peers had a spouse and a child, or children(!).
Now, don’t get me wrong, “creating” children does not require an adult act, it actually requires little more than barely pubescent hormones and a lack of concern for proper birth control (see: The South, The Midwest, and The Wire). But having a baby and attempting to raise it will usually turn someone into a “trying-to-be-responsible-person” (a.k.a. an adult) just about as quickly as anything else I can think of (other notable catalysts to adulthood: overcoming drug addiction, witnessing a serious crime, experiencing domestic violence first or second hand, having to take care of an invalid.).
But is there more to life than being a responsible (read: boring) adult? I know plenty of careerists who spend all their free time and money abusing drugs and getting wasted in order to feel like less of an adult, and I know plenty of parents who use “grandma” to raise their kid about three to four nights a week so they can “get their drink on.” I’m not judging, I’m just noticing. And Mom, you’re lucky you live so far away, because I’d probably raise the bar to six nights a week….JUST KIDDING!
The worst part of being an adult is that what appear to be perks to a teenager are actually mere rites of passage that quickly lose their appeal. Because I am an adult, I can drink recklessly in public so long as I don’t fall down or make a scene, and I can legally fly to Vegas in order to gamble away all of my money and then declare bankruptcy to avoid paying my real bills, but this doesn’t change the fact that I care more about respecting myself than I do about bending rules and pretending that my body likes being poisoned in order to provide me with a brief inhibition of judgment that never lasts long enough for me to do anything more than commit to an unnecessary late night drive-thru at Jack-In-The-Box.
The bottom line is that at 28, I’m not very different from 8. My body and its routine functions still provides me with simultaneous disgust and intrigue, my imagination is still 1000 times more interesting to me than any aspect of our so-called reality, I still refuse to settle for anything less than what my dreams provide and demand for me, and when I’m really sad, I still want to see my mommy for a hug.
So if you want my advice on adulthood, which I’m sure you don’t, I’ll tell you the same exact thing I told 165 high school kids: “Don’t take anything in life too seriously, except the importance of being as kind as you can be, at all times, to everyone you encounter. You never know what you’ll need and who you’ll need it from in the future, but you certainly only make things harder for yourself when you close off opportunities just because they don’t seem appealing or cool to you, at the time. Be nice; your life will be a lot easier that way.”
Now I have to get back to lamenting my one point loss in my championship game of fantasy football, because that’s what adults do best; they figure out how to cope with loss.
