Nah…just kidding. Im still pretty sure that despite how 18 year old girls at the mall see me, Im not an adult. That may be one of the first signs of this mental disconnect for me…
Scene: The Regal Cinemas, Phillipsburg, NJ. It is a sunny Friday afternoon.
Me: I've just left the bathroom and am heading towards the counter. I'm staring at an 18 year old whose body it seems was manufactured by a God that hates me to my core.
Her: “Mister, can I tell you something”?
Me: “Certainly”. (meanwhile thoughts of what parts of her I want to bite first are racing through my deranged head).
Her: "Your zipper is open and your pants are around your ankles".
Me: (acting like I had planned this)…“Thanks for noticing, isn’t this how all you young kids dress today”?
Her: "You’re gross".
So that’s just one of the ways I know that even though I still like lightsabers, comics, vampires, Legos, Playdoh and Star Trek, Im apparently still seen by those around me...those who don’t really know me, as an adult.
Sometimes there are people who stop me in the street who are probably thinking…”Here is a regular adult who I can ask directions from”. Little do they realize that I may physically appear to be a grown up but in reality I still get so excited when I see my wife’s perfect boobs that I drop the TV remote.
As a related aside, I tried to explain this to her, making her understand how every time I see them, it's like I’m twelve and I’ve just looked at my first Playboy and realized the amazing epiphany that out in the world women are (wait for it) naked under their clothes.
It is a realization that was surpassed only years later when I discovered the sheer volume of free porn available to me (at most 3 mouse clicks away) online.
Scene: Online discussion with a relative’s 17 year old teenager.
Me: So, it’s cool to see you online. How is school going?”
Him: “ok bt I rlly donnt like my mtahh class Numbers is hard, dude”.
Me: “I see… so is your keyboard broken cause there’s a bunch of fuckin letters missing in your response”.
Him: “Nah,. Ima juist writing.,. I don’t got time to check spellin don count in emailz lol”.
Me: "Well it certainly does when your emails read like they were written by an epileptic woodpecker on amphetamines”.
Him: “What is amphetimenes?”
Me: “Really?…you misspelled a word that was right in front of you… Maybe we should just go back to nodding politely at each other during family get togethers?”
Him: “kewl”.
Me: “Yes…kewl, indeed”.
So I wouldn’t say I’ve had a mid-life crisis yet but I do find myself thinking of what comes next and what I’ve done so far. And while those internal dialogues are constantly ongoing in my giant brain, I don’t dwell on them unless something happens to remind me that despite how I see myself, others see me in a very different and somehow more superficial way.
I think the thought progression is the same for a lot of people. No matter what age you are, you think at some point that the Gates O’ Knowledge will swing open and you will feel, look, sound and act like your “idea’ of what an adult is.
When you’re a teenager you think no one takes you seriously and you cant wait until you’re in college but you spend almost all your time fucking around and drinking and then you leave school and you get into your early twenties and then you spend a lot of time fucking around and drinking and then you get close to thirty and if you weren’t fucking around and drinking, you’d realize that you don’t feel any more like an adult then you did when you were 16.
And then you’re in your 30’s and you’re established at a career, you have a freakin mortgage for gods sake and you find yourself examining your hairline on a semi-daily basis and you’re wondering if it's getting closer to the dreaded prostate exam and worse than that the Starbucks girl keeps giving you weird glances and you're trying to make the best of a car that’s always on the verge of sucking your wallet dry and you think…is this it? Am I a grown up now?
Then you’re 40 and you’re wondering if you have enough fiber in your diet and the mortgage seems to be the exact same amount even though you’ve been paying into it for 10 years and your friends are all discussing whether its better to have more than one kid and you find yourself debating things called 401K’s and SARSEP plans at the only kids-free-dinner you’ve had this year AND you have a kid, a kid who by the way thinks she is already an adult judging by the way she talks to you and that above all makes you feel like you’re wading through the raging waters of irony that are threatening to engulf you.
Ok…take a deep breath…
So…I’m 42… and I still like lightsabers, comics, vampires, Legos, Playdoh and Star Trek.
Oh… and I still really like boobs.
Scene: In the TV department of the local Best Buy.
Me: “So, I’m looking to buy a TV, and I brought some media to test the screens”.
Him: "Whoa, whoa…old dude…we don’t have a phonograph or whatever to play your records”. (He uses air quotes when he says “phonograph”). Actually I’m amazed he knows what a phonograph is.
Me: “No, misguided doofus. I brought some Blu-Ray disks to test before I buy a new TV. Should I speak slower”? (I use air quotes when I say “slower”. But he doesn’t get it.
Him: “Ummmmmmm…
Me: “OK, let’s try this again. Can you show me one of two things? Either the new Samsung 55” Plasma or someone who has perhaps climbed a little higher than you on the evolutionary ladder”? Any chimp will do”.
Him: “…”
Me: “Thanks for your help, could you help an old man to his car”?
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