Adult-ness

As I mentioned in my last post, my wife and I just bought our first house. I’m 40 years old – and I just bought my first house. This is actually kinda par for the course. I didn’t get married until I was 34… I still don’t have any kids. I have absolutely no idea what I want to be when I grow up. In fact, there are quite a few folks out there who have simply accepted the likelihood that I just won’t ever grow up.

They may be right. I’m not really even sure what it means to grow up. Yes, tying the mortgage albatross around my neck is probably one of the items on the checklist…as was getting married, finally moving out of my parents’ house, and realizing that music actually sounds better when it’s not causing physical pain.

The evolution of western society – what some call progress – has been, on the whole, a very good thing. The progression of civil rights, the benefits of improved medicine and nutrition, the world-shrinking improvements of communications technologies, air conditioning… these things are some of the examples I cite when asked why I’m glad I live in the present, as opposed to, say, the 1770s.

However, there are some small areas in which progress has let us down. Here’s a silly example: the fact that smoking is essentially on its way out in America is a good thing overall. From a health perspective, not smoking is a very good thing – and we know this because of the advances we’ve seen in medicine over the last 50 years or so. However, one area that has suffered greatly by the decrease of smoking is in the area of gallant gestures. When a woman put an unlit cigarette in her mouth, and then slowly looked up, there was a definite prescribed response: light that cigarette for her! It was a great equalizer – even the most un-cool could look cool by coming to the rescue of the damsel who was suffering from clear lungs! With smokers gradually going the way of the dodo bird and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, men no longer have access to this simple yet chivalrous gesture of gallantry. Now all that’s left is to figure out what to do with their cell phones, iPods, and Starbucks long enough to man-handle a door for her… assuming she won’t be offended…

Another area in which progress has hurt us is in the area of rites of passage. As a middle-class white city kid who came of age in the late 80s, early 90s, I never had a defining moment that made me a ‘man.’ I had no Bar-Mitzvah, I didn’t fill my bottom lip with gigantic metal plates, I didn’t get my ‘bones’ by ‘whacking’ a ‘made man’, I didn’t bungee jump from a rainforest canopy into the jaws of a bazillion piranhas, nothing!

We just don’t have anything like that in my culture. There’s no debutante presentation, no quinciniera, no symbolic passing of a mystical eagle feather… I have no tangible, empirical evidence of adulthood, no single event I can point to and say “Ah, now I’m a man.”

There are some contenders – some times that are put forth by parents or military recruiters or John Hughes movies… but they don’t really fit the bill. The loss of virginity, senior prom, selective service notification, the first legal alcoholic beverage, the first paid vacation day – they’re all important, but none of them say ‘grown up.’

Then, suddenly, I’m 40 and I am the proud owner of a shiny new mortgage. So at some point it seems that I passed that threshold into adulthood. When did it happen? I missed it. I hope there weren’t any forms I had to fill out, or passwords I had to say. I guess there wasn’t a parade or wake or meeting I was supposed to attend. There was no badge or license or certificate.

So maybe – just maybe – I don’t have to worry about it! Maybe it’s one of those things that just happens, and doesn’t require any assistance from me – like growing hair or rising gas prices.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s the case. If any of you have some ideas you’d like to share with the class, I’d love to hear them!