What they don't tell you when you're a child is that once you reach adulthood, you are never, ever, ever, ever going to think at all that you are an adult. It is our Achilles heel unspoken to prevent children from overtaking us as a species. I might have posted this in my comedy blog had it not been so true. If this wasn't so much part of the world, it would be funny. It's not. It's HILARIOUS.
When I meet people for the first time, I tend to look at them, not as the finely, or sort of polished grown-ups, but as the kids they once were. I look for a glint in the eye, a playfulness in their manners, and the weirdness of a habit they may not even realize they have. It doesn't always work. Some people just have no childhood left in them, and some only discover they can have any appreciation of the power of play when they are far older. I like all of the ideas behind that. I just don't know if all people know their part of that big secret that kids aren't told.
It's the politics that tries to beat into us that we're supposed to be grown-up and responsible and not silly. There's a dream I have that some night, deep into debates, and filibustering that there's a codger, with his lobbyists in the back playing with their Yo-Yo, or someone beating on a game of Milles Borne with their buddies by the Ted Kennedy Memorial Bench. That was a card game my childhood best friend and I would play for hours upon hours. That could have been the only game, but there were trees to be climbed and a kid down the street with a pool. I wonder if some Congressman thinks that it would be fun to scale the balconies like Eddie Vedder did in most of the shows I saw in the early-to-mid 1990's.
A few weeks back, in the middle of August, my husband reached his fiftieth birthday. I never consider him a "grown-up" but it's weird thinking I'm married to a guy who is now officially OVER fifty. As an actual child, I couldn't picture myself over forty. But here I am, way, way, way over forty, and wondering if I'll be just as giddy as I am today. I think we all grow in huge ways, not physically, but emotionally, (screw spiritually, consider it an offshoot of emotionally if you are speaking with me). I also think that just as we change from the day born until the first grade, we change from one decade to the next, if we are lucky to make it that far.
We change the way we stand, the way we walk, the way we speak- for instance, in my twenties I would babble "motherfucker" in nearly every sentence, when "fuck" was not appropriate. "Shit" has since replaced this, and still when I utter f-bombs it generally is on stage, or in a crowd setting. If we try to remember how someone's voice sounded when they were kids, to meet them as an adult is often a jarring change. In my case, it's my weight that usually throws people. (Off of couches, usually). For most of my over-eighteen years, I was a spotty size five, occasionally zooming as far as a six. Tiny. In my childhood, on asthma medications, I tended to remain a bit chubby- which was weird because I don't really remember many meals at home. Now when people see me, they try, in adult-like politeness to say "You look great", when they really want to do is laugh out loud and say, "You look GREAT!(big)". I get that. The one adult quality we tend to learn is how to keep our actual thoughts in our heads. Some of us are better at it, I'm not as good at it. My friend Jennifer is the only other person I know who will give you an answer to a question, regardless of the question, and regardless if it is something that need be tiptoed about. Neither of us tiptoe. We're too big.
For a long time, I had the idea that when a person becomes a parent, THEN he or she becomes an adult, for real. I watch my friend Leila and Shayne, who are both very amazing moms, who have home schooled their kids. I say this half in jest, for Leila has given her two kids both home and traditional classroom education, but every moment with her is a lesson in something. She's amazing. (Her blog, Stop Speaking Whinese, is a favorite amongst parents in the punky-mom community, where she thrives.) I've seen both be very strong, authoritative adults, guiding the irchins into a lifelong step towards independent thought. Both are teaching their children to be adults. In the same breath, Taylor, the oldest of the children of whom I speak, is set to graduate Cal Arts, the very school where I met the young, pre-parent, pre-married to her instructor, Shayne. I saw Shayne as Taylor is now. Both are deeply loyal and loving, and both are goofy as all get-out. Taylor will give you the history of Manga, fully illustrated with facial visuals of characters, just as Shayne would talk about the Mexican waiters she flirted with at her job. Taylor is as Shayne was, except with a penis and about a foot and a half taller... and not married to his film teacher. The mirror is there, the everlasting childhood is there. Rather than Legos and video games, Taylor now plays with Legos and video games.
Every week a woman comes in to clean my house. Why? Yes, I'm gimpy and things are hard for me to do for more than a few minutes at a time, but really, my husband is a kid. He hates any housework. He will leave the same diet cola can on a table for as long as the table has legs, or until he sees someone else moving it, when he says, "OH, I was just about to get that!" His boyhood world is about not having to clean up after himself, and we both are deeply addicted to movies- so much so we have a theater in our house. Mike has a boy's night out once a week, and that in itself is a testimony to non-adulthood by any male at any age. Penn, Mike, and a few of the Penn-o-philes wander into Penn's theater, and take in films with the only and I mean, SOLELY only and one purpose, and that would be to see who out smartasses the films the best. One day, we all watched the Stooges, and went into fits when Penn backed up to the spot, the line, the event that we couldn't stop laughing over, until we were all raw. No one in that room is ever going to be an adult.
I'm absolutely not an adult. I have pet rats, spent most of my thirties working in ren-faires, and I draw cartoons all day, when I'm not in my music mode- playing in a band that exists online. These are things I could want to be as a kid, as they say in Inglorious Basterds, "there's a bing-o". My hair is maroon at the moment- on the burgundy side, and when I was married, it was blazing pink, with my tattoo peering just above the dress that was made to appear like a ren-queen's gown. Far, far away, on a planet formerly thought of as explainable go I. I still wear t-shirt nearly every day, live in sweat pants or pajama bottoms, as I did for most of my adulthood (?), and watch cartoons when I can on Adult Swim. I am an adult who has more toys now than I have ever had as a kid. That's what is the truth about adulthood, the toys just get bigger. The other difference is that we're the ones who pay for those toys.
The car is mine. The house is in my name because I was in the Navy, so the government thought that for the torture of existing in a sexist, racist, hyper-religious, right-wing marching band, without instruments, I earned the right to a loan, so I could now pay them for the honor. I'm in school, still, taking free courses with MIT, Harvard and other schools around the globe. I play with toys- an XBox, a Wii, and loads of video games that are here for me to abuse when I'm not doing Zumba or some other belly dancing thingy. I pay for the rights to my toys, and as a child, in years, I paid for most of it in ways kids aren't supposed to. I was one of the kids who didn't become a kid until I was in my twenties. I learned a sense of play. I explored who I was in many ways. I did all of the things I didn't get to do as a teenager, and even was in a band in my early thirties. I may have grey hairs, but mentally, not a one. My body may act like it's not being nice, but I still use it to do silly things, like pretend Wii-hulu hoop. When I ever go into a pool- I become the same dolphin I was when I was smaller, (and many years younger). And, when I watch my husband's favorite movie, Jaws, I remember how my best friend and I grabbed at each other when that tooth-shaking scene presented a big surprise!
I can enjoy these moments because I accept that I am not ever, as in never, going to be anything other than a big kid. I am never going to belittle anyone else a second, third, or fifty-first childhood. When I see real kids now, I see them not with envy of their youth, but with the glint of the all-knowing- "you think you're a kid NOW, wait until you're forty!"
When I meet people for the first time, I tend to look at them, not as the finely, or sort of polished grown-ups, but as the kids they once were. I look for a glint in the eye, a playfulness in their manners, and the weirdness of a habit they may not even realize they have. It doesn't always work. Some people just have no childhood left in them, and some only discover they can have any appreciation of the power of play when they are far older. I like all of the ideas behind that. I just don't know if all people know their part of that big secret that kids aren't told.
It's the politics that tries to beat into us that we're supposed to be grown-up and responsible and not silly. There's a dream I have that some night, deep into debates, and filibustering that there's a codger, with his lobbyists in the back playing with their Yo-Yo, or someone beating on a game of Milles Borne with their buddies by the Ted Kennedy Memorial Bench. That was a card game my childhood best friend and I would play for hours upon hours. That could have been the only game, but there were trees to be climbed and a kid down the street with a pool. I wonder if some Congressman thinks that it would be fun to scale the balconies like Eddie Vedder did in most of the shows I saw in the early-to-mid 1990's.
A few weeks back, in the middle of August, my husband reached his fiftieth birthday. I never consider him a "grown-up" but it's weird thinking I'm married to a guy who is now officially OVER fifty. As an actual child, I couldn't picture myself over forty. But here I am, way, way, way over forty, and wondering if I'll be just as giddy as I am today. I think we all grow in huge ways, not physically, but emotionally, (screw spiritually, consider it an offshoot of emotionally if you are speaking with me). I also think that just as we change from the day born until the first grade, we change from one decade to the next, if we are lucky to make it that far.
We change the way we stand, the way we walk, the way we speak- for instance, in my twenties I would babble "motherfucker" in nearly every sentence, when "fuck" was not appropriate. "Shit" has since replaced this, and still when I utter f-bombs it generally is on stage, or in a crowd setting. If we try to remember how someone's voice sounded when they were kids, to meet them as an adult is often a jarring change. In my case, it's my weight that usually throws people. (Off of couches, usually). For most of my over-eighteen years, I was a spotty size five, occasionally zooming as far as a six. Tiny. In my childhood, on asthma medications, I tended to remain a bit chubby- which was weird because I don't really remember many meals at home. Now when people see me, they try, in adult-like politeness to say "You look great", when they really want to do is laugh out loud and say, "You look GREAT!(big)". I get that. The one adult quality we tend to learn is how to keep our actual thoughts in our heads. Some of us are better at it, I'm not as good at it. My friend Jennifer is the only other person I know who will give you an answer to a question, regardless of the question, and regardless if it is something that need be tiptoed about. Neither of us tiptoe. We're too big.
For a long time, I had the idea that when a person becomes a parent, THEN he or she becomes an adult, for real. I watch my friend Leila and Shayne, who are both very amazing moms, who have home schooled their kids. I say this half in jest, for Leila has given her two kids both home and traditional classroom education, but every moment with her is a lesson in something. She's amazing. (Her blog, Stop Speaking Whinese, is a favorite amongst parents in the punky-mom community, where she thrives.) I've seen both be very strong, authoritative adults, guiding the irchins into a lifelong step towards independent thought. Both are teaching their children to be adults. In the same breath, Taylor, the oldest of the children of whom I speak, is set to graduate Cal Arts, the very school where I met the young, pre-parent, pre-married to her instructor, Shayne. I saw Shayne as Taylor is now. Both are deeply loyal and loving, and both are goofy as all get-out. Taylor will give you the history of Manga, fully illustrated with facial visuals of characters, just as Shayne would talk about the Mexican waiters she flirted with at her job. Taylor is as Shayne was, except with a penis and about a foot and a half taller... and not married to his film teacher. The mirror is there, the everlasting childhood is there. Rather than Legos and video games, Taylor now plays with Legos and video games.
Every week a woman comes in to clean my house. Why? Yes, I'm gimpy and things are hard for me to do for more than a few minutes at a time, but really, my husband is a kid. He hates any housework. He will leave the same diet cola can on a table for as long as the table has legs, or until he sees someone else moving it, when he says, "OH, I was just about to get that!" His boyhood world is about not having to clean up after himself, and we both are deeply addicted to movies- so much so we have a theater in our house. Mike has a boy's night out once a week, and that in itself is a testimony to non-adulthood by any male at any age. Penn, Mike, and a few of the Penn-o-philes wander into Penn's theater, and take in films with the only and I mean, SOLELY only and one purpose, and that would be to see who out smartasses the films the best. One day, we all watched the Stooges, and went into fits when Penn backed up to the spot, the line, the event that we couldn't stop laughing over, until we were all raw. No one in that room is ever going to be an adult.
I'm absolutely not an adult. I have pet rats, spent most of my thirties working in ren-faires, and I draw cartoons all day, when I'm not in my music mode- playing in a band that exists online. These are things I could want to be as a kid, as they say in Inglorious Basterds, "there's a bing-o". My hair is maroon at the moment- on the burgundy side, and when I was married, it was blazing pink, with my tattoo peering just above the dress that was made to appear like a ren-queen's gown. Far, far away, on a planet formerly thought of as explainable go I. I still wear t-shirt nearly every day, live in sweat pants or pajama bottoms, as I did for most of my adulthood (?), and watch cartoons when I can on Adult Swim. I am an adult who has more toys now than I have ever had as a kid. That's what is the truth about adulthood, the toys just get bigger. The other difference is that we're the ones who pay for those toys.
The car is mine. The house is in my name because I was in the Navy, so the government thought that for the torture of existing in a sexist, racist, hyper-religious, right-wing marching band, without instruments, I earned the right to a loan, so I could now pay them for the honor. I'm in school, still, taking free courses with MIT, Harvard and other schools around the globe. I play with toys- an XBox, a Wii, and loads of video games that are here for me to abuse when I'm not doing Zumba or some other belly dancing thingy. I pay for the rights to my toys, and as a child, in years, I paid for most of it in ways kids aren't supposed to. I was one of the kids who didn't become a kid until I was in my twenties. I learned a sense of play. I explored who I was in many ways. I did all of the things I didn't get to do as a teenager, and even was in a band in my early thirties. I may have grey hairs, but mentally, not a one. My body may act like it's not being nice, but I still use it to do silly things, like pretend Wii-hulu hoop. When I ever go into a pool- I become the same dolphin I was when I was smaller, (and many years younger). And, when I watch my husband's favorite movie, Jaws, I remember how my best friend and I grabbed at each other when that tooth-shaking scene presented a big surprise!
I can enjoy these moments because I accept that I am not ever, as in never, going to be anything other than a big kid. I am never going to belittle anyone else a second, third, or fifty-first childhood. When I see real kids now, I see them not with envy of their youth, but with the glint of the all-knowing- "you think you're a kid NOW, wait until you're forty!"
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