At what point are we expected to “grow up?” What does “growing up” really mean? I get the feeling that some people believe growing up means sucking the fun right out of life. I’m almost 25 and I play video games and read comic books and like to go on adventures instead of looking up exact directions, but I also get up at 5 am, arrive at work early and work hard all day, pay my bills on time, and I have pretty darn good credit. I’d say I’m plenty grown up, but some people would disagree with me because of how much I hold on to my childhood.
Let’s put aside the fact that, relatively speaking, I am still a child. I can take care of myself without causing harm to others. That’s pretty responsible. I can generally see both sides of an argument, and I can usually come up with three or more solutions to a problem. I don’t confront people; I try to see things from a different viewpoint; I am in control of my emotions (most of the time). That’s pretty mature. I also like to drink, laugh at fart jokes, be crude, and generally live in a juvenile state of mind because, and I’ll say it a hundred times, being a grown-up SUCKS. The world isn’t sharks and dolphins, and we don’t encourage people to think solely in terms of sharks and dolphins, so why can’t I be a grown-up child (or a child grown-up)?
Video games, especially nowadays, are like movies that you control. You can sit through a two hour movie, sure, or you can play through the movie and control the action yourself for 8+ hours (usually +++ hours). Comic books, like video games, are an art form in themselves. Someone writes the book, someone draws the book, someone else colors the book, and a team of other developers bring the comic to life. Have you looked through a comic book these days? The amount of detail that’s in the drawings is amazing; it’s not some general picture, it’s a masterpiece; a drawn out snapshot of life, and that’s something that kids and adults can both appreciate. It’s all different modes of entertainment, like reading a book or playing a sport, and each medium provides a different experience.
And why the rush to grow up? We spend our childhoods waiting for the day we can call ourselves “grown-ups” and our adult lives wishing our childhood days would return to us. I think we can have the best of both worlds. Enjoy life, age be damned. I’m grown up enough for right now, and I refuse to participate in a society that demands we return to the 1950′s and crush our youth when we enter the working world. There’s a reason those people drank so much; they were filling a void.
I’ve heard my women friends complain many times about how all the men in the world have Peter Pan Syndrome and act like children all the time. You’re damn right we have Peter Pan Syndrome. Growing up sucks! Not everyone wants to graduate high school or college, get married, and procreate; some of us, men and women, want to experience life in a different way. We’re not necessarily ruling out children, we’re just saying “Hold your derby horses.”
I don’t see a reason to punish anyone for wanting to live a different way. I do, however, want to punish people for refusing to let me live the way I want to live. It’s my life, fuck off and live your own. I don’t need to grow up, you need to be more open-minded, you close-minded yuppie. Yeah, name calling, what up? Solving problems by calling you a different name, mmhmm, because it makes me feel better. Let’s all hug and appreciate each other for our differences, but don’t touch me while we do it. I do not like to be touched.
