Babies and other ugly grown-up things
Thu Oct 16, 20:55 | RandomEverywhere I turn, people I know seem to be growing up.
My friend Aaron is about to become an uncle – twice over. Both sisters are within about a week of becoming mothers.
My parents’ close friends have their first grandchild, now about seven months old. In fact, of the tight circle of friends my parents have, they remain the only ones without grandchildren.
People I went to high school with are getting married. Friends are purchasing condos with their girlfriends. Everywhere I turn, there are these “My goodness, you honestly think you’re prepared for this?” occurences.
My sister has been dating her boyfriend for five years, minus a few bumps in between. While a wedding in the future doesn’t seem plausible at this point, I’ve known marriages that have fallen apart faster.
And you know what? I have zero interest in the whole sordid affair of this whole “adult” act. No children, no marriage, none of this garbage until I can tell myself that I’ve done what I need to do.
Am I just at that age where everyone around me thinks it’s time to take on these things? Why is 21 that magic number?
My happiness is much better measured in accomplishment and pride. Seven-hundred-pound men can get engaged, crack dealers can own houses, meth addicts can have children. The acts are really nothing special to me.
I’m far more interested in the products of hard work and good morals: excellent careers, major awards, discoveries, medals, publishing, degrees, diplomas, airtime, and pageviews.
If more people my age were less interested in scoring at the bar and more interested in the aforelisted, we’d have a much happier modern world.
So why is it that we as a society praise people who buy houses they can’t afford for families they can’t support or hold together? With such a debt problem, why are we encouraging $150,000 homes for people with $26,000 salaries?
Moreso: why is it that some arbitrary date comes along and what was forbidden as a child becomes offered, encouraged, and in fact shamed if you neglect to take it? No booze, no smoking, no casual sex, no children – not until you’re of age and then everything magically becomes okay. There’s something inherently wrong in this system, and I wish we would continue to shame people who participate in these things well into adulthood – we’d be much better off as a society.
What makes 21 such a magic number? The average age that people in Canada get married is between 32 and 34—maybe your friends are just weird :P
— Aaron Fri Oct 17, 09:33 #
I think it’s a given that my friends are weird, birds of a feather and all that.
I’m also sure that the “I don’t want to die alone” second and third marriages done by people 60+ tend to skew that number. I wouldn’t doubt that marriage numbers drop when that generation dies, because the younger ones don’t feel as strong a need to get married.
— Jamie Fri Oct 17, 09:52 #