"You old as f*ck. For this club, you know, not for the earth"

Bouncers haven't started barring me from clubs yet, and I do still get ID'd in a city where the legal drinking age is 18, but I've started to feel really old lately. I think it started when the cute surfer guys with the spiky hair that I was trying to chat up began talking about how excited they were to party after graduation. From high school.

I am an accidental cougar. It's bad enough to be robbing the cradle, but worse when you don't even realize it. Hey, it's all good, I'm young too right? Wrong. We old, We old as f*ck.

warning: jailbait

In a couple of years my close personal friends will legally be able to do things like cut people open and remove everything from diseased gums to livers (thank you very much, jagerbombs). The same individuals who once ran headfirst into their own chimneys and who had to be practically carried into a taxicab because their shoes were broken. And covered in vomit. My friends are (or soon, anyways) accomplished and published scientists, certified accountants, bar managers, hotel venture capitalists, actuaries and lawyers. They work for google. They are responsible for the math skills of brooklyn third graders. It's like we're real people! With real jobs! We don't take spring break, we take time off. If people screw up, death could be involved, or worse, a whole lot of money to fix that electron microscope.



I feel old, but why don't I feel like an adult yet? Maybe because I'm still essentially freeloading off my parents and my most recent personal accomplishment was going to seven bars in one night and not having a hangover. My only responsibility right now is to make enough money to pay the rent for my shared room that lacks a door and to feed and water myself without getting scurvy. And this is me in my "financially independent and thus responsible" phase because next year, whilest I may be doing more productive things with my time, I will be living entirely off my parents' dime (and apparently, dropping sick rhymes).

I am exactly the kind of person they write about in newspaper articles with titles like "Time to Leave the Nest" (Globe and Mail, Sept 14 2007) which concludes, "Those who live under parents' roofs simply because it is the easiest and most comfortable thing to do, however, must recognize that the twenties are not a prolonged adolescence. They are adults. Time to launch."

Ouch. Yes, I feel guilty for being five years and $20,000 in tuition from my high school days and not any closer to financial independence. Why must they taunt me with statistics that tell me that by the time my grandmother was my age she had already secured a husband and popped out two children? And if the media isn't guilt-tripping me about my selfish prolonged adolescence, it's making me depressed about low starting wages, quarterlife crises, the increasing costs of education, and how I'm part of the "houseless generation" who will never be able to afford a home. Apparently our generation is a bunch of underachievers. "Fewer 20-Somethings Reaching Adult Benchmarks" they proclaim (ABC News April 21 2005). "Today's 20-somethings will be the first who won't do better than their parents. A college education doesn't deliver the same promises that it once did." Well, that's just great, guys.

the promise of a college education.

But, at the same time, I don't think the idea that your 30's are the new 20's is necessarily all bad. It begs the question, well then what does that make your 20's? In response, sociologist Dr. Frank Furstenberg of the University of Pennsylvania has defined a new life stage of "early adulthood." In his article "Growing Up is Harder to Do" he explains that early adulthood is not simply an extension of adolescence, unlike what the mass media would have you believe. "Young adults," as he calls us "are physically mature and often possess impressive intellectual, social and psychological skills. Nor are young people today reluctant to accept adult responsibilities. Instead, they are busy building up their educational credentials and practical skills in an ever more demanding labor market." Ha, so there, we aren't just a bunch of losers who can't make it in the real world and crumble under the pressure.

I agree with Dr. Furstenberg that rather than trying to hold the young people of our generation to the standards and timeframes of those previous, society should revise what is considered the "normal" age of full adulthood as well as the definition of "adult" itself. While in the 1950's and 60's the notion of adulthood was firmly associated with marriage and child-bearing, a 2002 study by Furstenberg indicated that Americans associated adulthood more strongly with a complete education and financial independence, whereas marriage and parenthood were regarded more as lifestyle choices as opposed to prerequisites.

While a complete education, my own home and financial independence all sound like lovely things which I would like to have one day, I accept that with constantly changing economic forces and social policies, it will take me longer to accomplish than it took my grandparents or parents. I don't consider it a handicap on my part, but simply a different time table. Adulthood is not only about having your finances in order, but also about finding purpose and identity. I know that I am very lucky to have parents who are willing and able to support me in this semi-autonomous state. I realize that it is a luxury to be able to complain about going to school for another four years and not have to worry about building up debts. From this fortunate position, I embrace my 20's, not as someone failing to be fully adult, but as someone who is working on it and enjoying the ride on the way. I realize more and more that there is a world of opportunity available to me to explore that perhaps wasn't as accessible a generation ago. I have languages to learn, seas to swim and foreign foods to eat before I commit to a mortgage. And hey, everyone could use a few extra years of irresponsible debauchery before settling down to paperwork and diapers. "Can't have a bunch of old pregnant bitches running around."


-VH