Entries Tagged 'being a grownup' ↓

My family recently booked a flight on US Airways. A few days later I got an email from them encouraging me to sign up for their “Dividend Miles” club. The basic gist of the email was, “Hey, if you sign up right now you can still get these miles.” But they didn’t stop there. The email continues on to say, “If you don’t sign up right now, we’re going to give your miles to Marvin!” I’m sorry, but why should that be the detail that ultimately convinces me to sign up for this program? If you’re not inspired enough to earn frequent flier miles for yourself, why should losing them to “Marvin” (swear I’m not making that name up) in any way sway your decision?

Apparently US Airways is trying to appeal to the three-year-olds in all of us. I can’t tell you how many times my daughter and niece—who are three and four respectively—have broken down crying simply because one of them wanted to play with a toy that the other one already had. “Mommy, I want the Littlest Pet Shop Bulldog!” Mind you, the crying child wanted nothing to do with that stupid bulldog thirty seconds ago, but now that her cousin has decided to play with it, it’s suddenly the only thing on earth that could ever possibly make her happy. You can try distracting her with food, movies, other toys, but no. As long as her cousin continues to possess a bulldog that should have been hers, nothing else will make her happy. The three-year-old mantra seems to be: “I don’t want this. I don’t want that. I want what YOU HAVE!“

I guess we never really grow out of that. That’s where the whole “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality comes from. Your big screen standard def TV was just fine two years ago until everybody around you started buying plasma HD. Now, god forbid they have something you don’t. US Airways understands this mentality better than we do apparently. And the thing is, I’m almost certain that scare tactic works amazingly well on their customers: “Oh no! I can’t imagine that I’ll ever fly enough to make these Dividend Miles worth the effort of signing up, but I will not let that little jerk, Marvin (who might actually find some use for them) get his grubby little hands anywhere near my miles.”

Well hey Marvin, you can have our miles. I don’t think my inner three-year-old is going to notice.

(from 2002)

When the pastor asked if I promised to love, honor and support Lauren, I said, “Sure I do.” How hard is that really? Say, “I love you,” treat her well and lend a hand around the house wherever I can. I apparently forgot to consider the fact that my bride-to-be was entering grad school to become a midwife.

I suppose I should have seen the red flags. After undergrad, Lauren took a year off to work as a nurse. Boy did that put things in perspective. I’d be complaining after a bad day, “Geez, my boss was yelling at me, the printer kept jamming and my computer crashed.” She’d come back with, “Oh yeah, well somebody died.” And that would pretty much be the end of that.

I’ve heard that nurses are the worst hypochondriacs because of what they see on a daily basis. Yeah, I get that. Through Lauren, I’ve learned about pretty much every horrible thing that can happen to a person. I was surprised at just how many orifices one can bleed from. And I knew I was gushing from every single one of them. Acute pain was the worst. I felt every poke, prod and incision that Lauren described – usually in my back or stomach. In marriage counseling, they told us listening was important. They didn’t clarify the importance of doubling over in agony.

But I made it through. We made it through. We made it through her night shifts and her sleep deprivation. We made an agreement that for every gruesome story she told me and for every surgical show on the Learning Channel she made me watch, she in turn would have to watch a scary movie. She hates action and suspense as much as I hate sharp stabbing pain, so it was a nice trade off.

Now’s she’s in grad school for midwifery. At first I was jazzed up about the idea. I mean, she’s studying all the precepts of gynecology after all. And so is everybody else in her class! All girls! Sooner or later, I knew they were going to have to practice breast exams! And maybe they’d need extra practice after class! And they’d all come over to our place, and they’d all be naked, and they’d start to tickle each other, and then the pizza girl would show up with her twin sister, and then… and then… And then Lauren told me all about the fine art of performing speculum exams.

Yep. All the women know exactly what I’m talking about. And all the men are better off in the ignorant bliss I was in less than a week ago.

During her year as a nurse, Lauren only had stories. Now she has books. With pictures. Of very not nice things. As I sit writing this, she’s at her desk writing a paper about Gonorrhea. She keeps asking me to touch… places on her body. You know, just to show me how they feel during a clinical exam. Places that should never ever EVER be clinical between a husband and a wife. She recently brought home a video of not one, not two, but six births. And she made me watch every single one of them. Sure sure, I know it’s supposed to be a beautiful, miraculous event. Blah blah blah. It was like a tragic car accident. I was horrified, yet I couldn’t look away. I just lay on my side, curled into as tight a ball as I’ve ever been since… well since I was the potential subject of one of these videos.

But through it all, Lauren was right next to me. Hugging me, cradling me, kissing my temple. She kept telling me how much this meant to her and how much she loved me. She even promised to watch Lord of the Rings as a thank you. How could I not love, honor and support someone like that? It’s a no-brainer.

Lauren’s Masters program lasts eighteen months. She’s two weeks in. Every day I come home and ask her how her day was, even though I probably don’t want to know. But as she starts telling me all about babies and the birthing process and the miracle of life, I can’t help but feel the excitement in her eyes and the passion in her voice. Passion about something that is more than just a career. It’s a calling. So I just smile, remembering why I fell in love with her, and why I said, “I do.”

Then she asks me to come feel her cervix – and the scalpels pierce my stomach yet again.

I saw a Humvee in the parking lot of Whole Foods today. Weird.

I realized today that I don’t really like most Christmas music and haven’t since I was a kid. Actually I realized that a few years ago, but I figured out WHY today. As a kid, Christmas music is fun mostly because you’re always the one singing it. But as you get older, you’re forced to listen to Bing Crosby sing it. And if you don’t particularly like Bing Crosby, well… it doesn’t do much for your like of the music in general.

My daughter came out with a very profound statement the other day: “I was two on the day I turned three.”

I used to buy milk two or more gallons at a time. Then I read some stuff that said milk wasn’t as good for you as everyone thought. These days I buy vinegar two or more gallons at a time. I’m not saying the one is a natural byproduct of the other, but there you are.

I never realized just how insanely fun it can be to throw one tiny cat onto the back of another.

I don’t think I will ever reach a point in my life where I am too mature to laugh at a really fat kid falling down.

For years I’ve told people the story of a childhood friend who peed on an electric fence as if it were something that happened to me personally. Somehow a story like that is just funnier in the first person.

I don’t care if she’s only fifteen; hot is hot and show me the law that says it’s illegal to leer.

I like to think I’m fairly open-minded when it comes to strange foods, but I still cannot wrap my mind around tofu.

Little kids’ bodies are so ridiculously disproportionate it’s almost a marvel they aren’t defective. Look at one of them when they raise their arms up high.  The fingers barely clear their scalp for crying out loud!

The thing I really miss about my Geo is playing “Merge Chicken” against people in Mercedes SUV’s.

I have no idea how I used to eat Ramen noodles in such large quantities.

I somehow can’t bring myself to feel sympathy for anyone who loses an hour and a half’s worth of work because they forgot to save.

I never realized that I hadn’t seen a single red hot dog since leaving Maine until about a year ago when I read on Wikipedia that red hot dogs are actually a Maine “thing.”

I likewise never realized that I hadn’t seen a single whoopie pie since leaving Maine until somebody told me that Maine is apparently the whoopie pie capital of the world.

Britney Spears is hot. Her music is catchy. And everyone just needs to lay off.

At any given hour on any given day I would bet a minor sum of money that I could find at least one Law & Order or CSI incarnation on TV.

I still don’t know, nor care, what the top news story of the day is.

I saw a Humvee in the parking lot of Whole Foods today. Still weird.

I received this email forward from an older relative. Even though I can appreciate where the writer is coming from, and even tend to agree with a lot of its sentiment, for some reason it just hacked me off. It’s a typical “Our generation is better than the new generation” tirade, which acknowledges all the things that made the previous generation great, but fails to recognize all the things they did to screw it up for those of us who followed. So just to set the record straight, here is the original email in its entirety with my comments in bold italics.

======================================

Those Born 1930-1979!

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930′s 40′s, 50′s, 60′s and 70′s !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

Yes and I’m sure many of you are still dealing with health problems and your own addictions to the same substances to this day as a result.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Of course, the oceans weren’t nearly as polluted back then as they were now thanks to you, so mercury contamination in tuna wasn’t as much of a concern back then.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

Look around at the gluttony of TV ads for designer pills intended to take care of everything from chronic asthma to irritable bowl syndrome to erectile dysfunction. Look at all the fun new forms of cancer you’re getting that your parents never had to deal with. Looks like all that lead-based paint and other chemicals you’ve been introducing into every product on the market had some unexpected long-term effects.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

Mind you, this was during a time when all your parents had to navigate were 45m.p.h. rural two lane roads where you encountered maybe ten other cars on your way to work. There were two intersections and one blinking light in town. Unless your parents were particularly idiotic drivers, the only chance they had of getting into an accident was if a deer jumped in front of them.

Today we’re driving on multi-laned highways with heavy merges, multiple exits to left and right, hundreds of signs pointing this way and that so that you’re never quite sure if you’re heading in the right direction or not. Not to mention the fact that we’re trying to run this gauntlet with about a thousand other cars, all going the same 65m.p.h. So forgive us if we’re a little more worried about what might happen to our children if we ended up in the middle of a ten-car pileup.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

Again, back then you actually had roads that weren’t jammed with other cars, and nice soft grass to ride on. But you’ve paved over everything since then, meaning we’re riding our bikes on asphalt. So yeah, we want a little more protection for our head in case we wipe out on yet another of your oil stained parking lots.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Great, and maybe if you hadn’t gone and polluted the water supply we’d be drinking from the hose too.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

This seems a bit disingenuous. Somehow I doubt that the “cootie” argument began with our generation.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because :

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING !

We’d be outside playing too, except for the fact that you bulldozed the baseball diamond to put up luxury condominiums, you tore down the YMCA to build a WalMart and you drained the swimming hole to put in yet another massive parking lot for yet another massive strip mall (which you won’t allow us to skateboard on). You’ve kind of taken away all our outdoor places to go. We’d ride our bikes there, but again, refer to the previous bit about those roads that you made entirely unsafe for us to be riding on.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

Chances are you were playing at or near one of your friend’s houses with at least one parent or trusted neighbor keeping a loose watch on everything. Today, our neighbors are strangers and both parents need to work just to keep up in this two-income trap that you managed to set for us.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

Do you really expect us to believe that you’re going to allow us to race a handmade go-kart down your hill? You won’t even let us SKATEBOARD on all those nice big parking lots you built.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computer’s, no Internet or chat rooms…….

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

Your friends lived across the street. Our friends live ten miles across town via one of those multi-laned highways we mentioned earlier. You know what we find when we go outside? Traffic.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

Those trees were in the backyards of your own houses. But since you’ve created a housing race encouraged by zero-interest loans you’ve priced us out of our own neighborhoods. We live in crammed-together suburbs and apartment complexes where the only trees are owned by somebody else who puts a fence around the thing so that we risk impaling our testicles more than breaking our teeth should we fall out.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

Okay, but then YOU yelled at US for swallowing gum. Which way do you want it?

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

AGAIN, you had your own backyards to do that stuff in. Our downstairs neighbors tend to call the police when they see us holding a gun in our common back yard.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Yet again, your friends were a two-minute walk across the street. You’ve destroyed the idea of a town center so all our friends are scattered across a thirty-mile radius. We need phones and email if we’re ever going to talk to them outside of school.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

Because you still had parks and public pools and something called “recess”, it probably wasn’t such a big deal if you didn’t make the team. You had other things to keep you active. But since you’ve graciously ELIMINATED all these things for us, maybe we don’t mind creating a few extra Little League teams so that more of our kids have the opportunity to do something other than play those X-Boxes and Playstations you mocked just a couple paragraphs ago.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Okay fine, I’m with you on this one.

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

It has also produced some of the most soulless, narcissistic, toy-hoarding, money grubbing greedy generations ever to grace this earth. People who gave up on the idea of making the world a better place once they realized that they could drive a BMW , own a condo and go on a cruise every year… Just sayin’.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

It’s also been an explosion of land, water and air pollution as you search for easier and cheaper ways to mass-produce all those innovations of yours.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And you dealt with it by selling out the idealism of your youth in favor of stock options, middle-management positions and items that sell for thirty-nine cents less at WalMart even though it put some of your friends out of business. Quite frankly, I’m not impressed with what you did with all that freedom, success and responsibility.

If YOU are one of them . . CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good

Okay, excuse me but YOU PEOPLE are the ones IN CHARGE of the government right now!!! YOU are the ones who made these rules and regulations. If you don’t like the way the world has gone, you have nobody to blame but your own self-righteous SELF.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Brave? BRAVE??? Are these the same “brave” people who spit, cursed and threw blood at the soldiers who returned from Vietnam in the late 60’s? Yes, your generation turned out a few gems, but so does every generation… ours included.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?

No, it makes me want to strangle all you sell outs from the older generation for ruining it for us. God willing we’ll do a better job with it for OUR children.

I am whooped. The fam and I just got back from a place in Pennsylvania called Peddler’s Village. It’s a very toursity place where people go to buy lots of crap that they don’t really need. Fortunately we didn’t go for that reason. You see they also have a mini-amusement park for kids called Giggleberry Fair which consists of a merry-go-round, a playroom full of dress up clothes, musical instruments, puppets, etc… But the coup de gras at this place is “Giggleberry Mountain” which is a gigantic contraption made of nets, ropes, tubes, slides, and anything else a kid might want to climb. It goes up six stories!

BUT, the best thing about this whole place, the thing that makes me want to go back again and again: on the bottom two levels of Giggleberry Mountain are a series of air canons for firing little NERF-like balls, of which there are literally thousands scattered here, there and everywhere. On the lower level there are canons that fire large volumes of balls up into the air, and on the second level there are swivel cannons that you use to fire at opponents on the other side of the well. Or you can do what I did and fire down into the well… into the crowd.

The best part is shooting at those kids who have just walked in and don’t quite realize what the room is all about just yet. Then out of nowhere a little ball suddenly plunks them in the head. They look up like, “What the heck was that?” When they shrug their shoulders and look away, you blast them again. Seriously, how awesome is that? Where else in America can you go where it’s actually okay, and even encouraged, for you to shoot little kids in the head? Nowhere, that’s where!

And I just want to say that I think I earned the title of “Funnest Grownup on the Freakin’ Planet” tonight. Most parents were only shooting at their own kids. Well, my kid was off with her mother climbing nets. So I just started unloading on anyone who was at least six-years-old and within range. At first they’d be like, “Holy crap, was that an adult who just shot me?” But after the second or third direct hit, they smartened up and started returning fire. By the time we finally moseyed on out of this place, I had a good twenty kids all ganging up to blast me with cannons or, when that failed, flinging them like baseballs and cheering like Mardi Gras whenever they pegged me in the face. No kidding, almost every single kid in that well was ignoring every other person at every other cannon and focusing every bit of firepower on me. It was like being on American Gladiators except I was the Gladiator.

It… was… AWESOME!

I bought my Geo Metro less than a month after moving to California. That was eight years ago. Another time. Another me. Over those next twenty-two months, I went through such profound changes in my life and personality that I actually have a hard time remembering a “me” before that time. As a result, that means I also have a hard time remembering a “me” who drove anything except that little black car. Of course “little” is a misleading word. I took that car over mountains. I took it into the desert. I drove it across the country three times – once with every earthly possession I owned in the trunk and back seat (which I still haven’t been able to identify as “lame” or “something Jack Kerouac would do”). It’s been pelted by everything from snow to falling rock to hailstones slung by a tornado. The Geo may have been “little”, but it was little in the way that, say, Joe Pesci is little.

Almost every major epiphany I had during that time occurred behind the wheel of my Geo: deciding to pull back from friends in order to figure out who I was as “just me”… fully realizing the extent of the love I had for a certain girl… understanding that I could move out of L.A. even though I felt like my whole life had been leading me there… ultimately realizing that no matter how much I thought I’d learned about myself, the world, and my place in it, I was still, and would forever be “full of s***.”

They weren’t all earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting revelations. There were also all the little things I learned behind the wheel of the Geo:

- My love for country music
- The proper method for controlling a skid around another car while you simultaneously curse them out and flip the bird.
- You can park anywhere in L.A. for free if you’re a good enough parallel parker who doesn’t mind walking a bit.
- The top number on your speedometer is not necessarily the top speed your car can handle.
- Cops will not pull you over no matter how fast you’re driving if there is a tornado in the vicinity.
- Windows-down is always preferable to air-conditioning on all but the most unbearably hot days.
- It doesn’t matter how badly you sing if you crank the radio loud enough.
- Even though we know we shouldn’t drive home drunk, we still sometimes do.
- A fresh coat of wax can make even a piece of junk look sporty and stylish.
- Even so, chicks will never gravitate toward a guy in an economy car.
- Sometimes it isn’t necessary to have a destination. Driving to drive is just as fun.

The Geo has been a central part of my life for over eight years now. But when the first words out of my mechanic’s mouth last week were, “How attached are you to this car?” it wasn’t hard to see the writing on the wall. He rattled off a list of problems that, without doing any calculations, added up to more than the car’s monetary worth. I’m not sure how surprised I was to discover tears welling up in my eyes, knowing that one way or another the Geo would have to be put down.

Today, as I signed the dotted line to purchase a new mini-van for my growing family, it all hit home. I will never drive the Geo again. It’s already off our insurance, making way for something newer, roomier, more reliable. Part of me regretted that I hadn’t taken the Geo for one last joyride. But really, what would that have gained? I know I have to move on. Even though the Geo played such a central role in the transition from “old me” to “new me”, I know it could not have continued functioning in this new and ever-changing life that I lead. In that respect, I’m actually almost glad the decision was taken out of my hands. The Geo’s usefulness, from a completely legal standpoint, is now worn out. Its destiny is fulfilled. Soon a tow truck will come take it away, leaving nothing in its wake but vivid memories and a generous tax write off. After that, the “me” transition, I suppose, will finally be complete.

So, slow ride, old friend. Take it easy.

In just over half a year I will be entering my thirties. But I’m not one to freak out about the fact that my youth is almost officially over. In a way, the last five years have been a gradual slope into adulthood anyway. Marriage, a kid, a job I held down for four straight years (a personal record), a beard, working in a field where people several years older view me as some kind of expert, starting a writing career in drips and drabs, another kid… In spite of it all, I still feel quite youthful and not at all like I need to worry about another decade coming to a close.

But two days ago I called the police on a neighbor who was playing his radio too loud.

And yesterday… I bought an area rug.

I received a rather long internet forward on my MySpace bulletin board this week which basically said, “Hey couch potato, make sure you vote next Tuesday!” Like most forwards that don’t involve filling out surveys or watching videos of indie rock bands on treadmills, I gave it only a quick skim before devoting my attention to more pressing matters, like creating my own South Park character and scanning for hotties amongst my friends’ friends list. I fully expected the bulletin and all its content to fade from memory by the time I logged off the site. But before clicking away to post a YouTube video of a cat falling down the stairs, my eyes happened upon one particular line: “They’re calling our generation the Apathetic Generation.”

The composition of this particular bulletin indicated an author with better writing skills than your typical 14 to 23-year-old MySpace user, so it made sense that the original poster was probably someone closer to my age and the apathetic generation to which he referred was my own. Born in 1978, I’ve always been rather confused as to which generation I technically belonged. A quick check of Wikipedia simultaneously places me in Generation X, Generation Y, The MTV Generation and something called “The Boomerang Generation.” But no matter which “our generation” the author was actually indicating, I could only assume that the finger-wagging “they” to which he alluded meant the people of our parents’ generation, which for the average MySpacer means the Baby Boomers.

Normally an attack like this doesn’t bother me enough to give it a second thought (isn’t that what apathy is all about?), but for some reason this particular criticism, made in this particular context, stuck with me well after I’d finished approving new friend requests and changing my profile song to “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley. What this nameless “they” was saying, according to the author, was that despite being faced with a war, a nuclear threat, human rights violations and a laundry list of other issues, “our generation” is still too lazy and uncaring to go out and vote. I went back over the post several times and the more I read that one key line, the more self-righteous my apathy became.

When “they” say “our generation” is apathetic, what “they” are really saying is that “we” aren’t like “them.” “We” don’t do all the things “they” did at our age. “Our generation” doesn’t mobilize for reform on college campuses. “Our generation” doesn’t march on the Capitol building waving placards and hurling slogans. “Our generation” doesn’t engage in civil disobedience while singing defiant folk songs. And “our generation” certainly doesn’t rally around political candidates who might end the tyranny, bring peace to our country and harmony to the world. If this is what “they” mean by an “apathetic generation” then I guess I’d say “they” are right.

But can “they” really blame us? After all, “they” are “our generation’s” role models. “They” thought trying to change the world was all noble and groovy for about a decade or so until they realized there was more money to be made selling real estate. “They” were all about fighting The Establishment and standing up for the little man until “they” realized they could use their law degree to defend The Establishment against little man’s lawsuits and earn a fatter paycheck. Woodstock, Marin County, the Sunset Strip, places where “they” used to hang out, smoke dope and say, “Love is all you need,” are now nothing more than giant spaces for them to build luxury condos and hang billboards advertising Big Macs, timeshares, and the next season of Big Brother. “They” were passionate. “They” were going to make a difference. And yet look at what “they” produced. Frankly, I think things might have turned out better if “they” had taken a cue from “our generation” and just said, “Eh, whatever.”

If there’s anything “our generation” has learned from “them”, it’s that politics is not the way to change the world. We tried it out for a while… more to see what all the fuss was about. During the 2004 Democratic and Republican Conventions, “our generation” descended on Boston and New York and tried to capture that allure of the late sixties. We marched. We protested. We spoke out on matters we only kind of understood. But the trend died quickly… probably when all the young men realized this political revolution wasn’t manifesting with a sixties-style sexual revolution. And as soon as it became apparent that those hot Blue State chicks weren’t giving it up after the rally, we went back to work at Best Buy to save enough cash for a Razr phone with internet capabilities—so we could check our MySpace on the go.

Maybe “our generation” doesn’t vote. Maybe we don’t give two hoots about who ends up controlling Congress next Tuesday. But does anyone among us—from “our generation” or “theirs”—really and truly believe that a different set of politicians will be the thing that brings about a new and better America? “They” have already proven their own lack of faith in the power of the vote by moving on from the passionate activism of the late sixties to the apathetic consumerism of pretty much every decade since. All “our generation” is doing is skipping over “power of the vote” and going straight to apathy.

That being said, “our generation” is far from apathetic. We do care about things. We really do. It’s just that right now, honestly, we have no idea whatsoever how to fix the mess that “they” created. Perhaps it will come to us in time. Perhaps what looks like apathy is just “our generation” unconsciously biding its time, watching and waiting until “they” vacate the premises. We know there’s nothing we can really do as long as “they” are still in control, so why waste “our” time and “our” energy on useless rallies and campaigns that will only serve to get another one of “them” elected? Better to sit here quietly listening to our iPods, playing World of Warcraft, and deciding which MySpace friends to put in our Top 8 List. Who knows, maybe MySpace will become the platform where the new revolution begins. Maybe with every silly blog we post, with every YouTube video we embed, with every slutty self-portrait we upload, we will slowly but surely come together as one unit who will finally bring down The Establishment “they” were ultimately powerless to stop. And unlike the misguided stunts “they” pulled in the preceding generation, our tactics are less likely to get us shot by the National Guard.

So to all the “they’s” who want to call us “The Apathetic Generation,” we say enjoy your election next Tuesday. We won’t be there, but we’ll be thinking of you. And when your solution to everything once again fails to solve anything, we’ll be here, predictably not caring. We’ll just keep on doing what we do everyday; hanging out on MySpace and waiting for you to die.

(deep SIGH)

First they took away dodgeball, saying it was too violent. Then a couple of kids fell off the see-saw and monkey bars, so away they went. Next the tall metal slides were replaced by short plastic corkscrews that don’t give you any speed. Before long somebody said that even swings were too dangerous for playground play. Now just when you thought parents and schools couldn’t get any more ridiculous and wussified than they already are, you know what some school board in Attleboro, Massachusetts decided this week? Apparently the game of Tag is no longer an appropriate game. Tag! I mean… TAG for crying out loud! Claiming “Recess is a time when accidents happen,” the Willette Elementary School has deemed one of the most basic, elemental and pure games of childhood as too rough and dangerous for kids to play. What’s even more amazing is that there’s nothing amazing about this decision. Schools all over the country have been taking similar measures for years. In 2002 a Santa Monica school banned the game saying that it “creates self esteem issues among slower and weaker children.”

I just don’t even know what to say about this decision that isn’t already self-evident to anyone who grew up in any previous generation, though I think George Carlin said it best: “Grownups are taking all the fun out of being a kid just to save a few thousand lives. It’s pathetic.”

Every generation fears the one that comes after it. Our grandparents were horrified by the rock-n-roll our parents listened to. Our parents were horrified by the brain-numbing MTV programming we watched. It’s expected. You think your parents are prudes and you wish your kids would be into the “wholesome” things you liked. But now that my generation is stepping into the parental roles a new and disturbing trend is happening. We’re actually saying that all the things we loved about being a kid are no longer good and valid forms of entertainment. Instead, we claim they’re damaging to the body and psyche of our frail little children. But the more I think about it, the deeper I think it goes. Parents aren’t vilifying things that are dangerous. What they’re really trying to forbid is any activity that kids can do without their direct supervision.

I never made that leap of logic until I read that soccer is now the number one youth sport in America. And what immediately occurred to me was that the article left out one key word from the declaration: soccer is the number one organized youth sport in America. Whenever you see American kids playing soccer, it’s almost without exception a structured, organized event with official teams, coaches, referees, and booster moms selling refreshments and car magnets. You almost never see a group of four or ten unsupervised kids trying to kick a ball through a makeshift goal. That’s what kids all over the world do, but not in America. Here, the sport that kids engage in most, irrespective of adult supervision, is basketball. Kids don’t need an organized group of parents to play basketball. As long as they have a ball, a net and a hard surface they’ll shoot hoops for hours. But since there’s no way to poll every pickup game on every cracked asphalt court in the country, soccer is the sport that wins the most popular title.

And that suits the parents of my generation just fine for some reason. They can’t stand the idea that their kids could be having any kind of fun that they didn’t personally orchestrate and supervise. And that’s why things like playground equipment and unstructured games like tag and dodgeball are going away. “Safety” and “self-esteem” are just easy scapegoats for the real truth: today’s parents are scared that their kids (gasp) might not need them.

I don’t know where all this insecurity originated and why it seems to be unique to parents my age. Is it that we wish our own parents would have spent more time playing with us that we feel compelled to make sure our kids never spend a joyful minute outside our presence? Is it the reports of kids getting stolen out of their own yards that make us too scared to let them leave our watch for any reason whatsoever? What is it that makes games like soccer, where dozens of kids can be supervised all at once, more preferable to games like tag where kids can supervise themselves? Why on earth is our generation unique in vilifying ourselves by vilifying the things we used to love? And where will it end? How much of our children’s lives will we attempt to structuralize with no thought given to what we’re depriving them of?

I always felt inferior to my friends in elementary school because I could never sweat adequately. We all played sports, and sweating was considered a sign of athleticism and studliness. I’m not sure why really. I guess we needed something to separate the men from the boys and we were all too short to slam-dunk. We’d be outside playing basketball in late March and already the other guys’ faces looked like glasses of iced tea on a hot day. They’d pivot, flipping their heads to the side, and the sweat would fling in all directions. Awesome. Meanwhile, I’d be playing Little League in the dead heat of July and my brow would just be starting to dampen—and I was a catcher.

I’ll never forget the day I finally became a man. I was at basketball camp in the sweltering hundred-percent humidity of August with about a hundred other boys. We were being coached by a dozen middle-aged men who had never forgiven themselves for missing that final shot at the buzzer twenty years earlier, and they were serving out their self-imposed penance by making the rest of us run laps to the point of stroke. After about my hundredth suicide sprint of the afternoon, I was hunched over trying to convince myself that the backboard was not in fact melting, when I felt what I thought was a fly crawling down my face. I waved my hand at it, but it didn’t fly away. Despite the fact that my heart was beating hard enough to pop the blisters on my feet, I smiled letting the solitary bead roll all the way down to my jaw, refusing to wipe it away. I came in first on every training circuit they threw at us that afternoon.

Any of a thousand childhood clichés could have been thrown at me that afternoon: “be careful what you wish for enjoy it while it lasts don’t be in such a hurry to grow up if you keep doing that it’ll make you go blind…” How I long for the days when I couldn’t muster up enough sweat to warrant even a Kleenex. Now I find myself soaking through jeans and multiple t-shirts on any given day in February. It doesn’t take much. All I have to do is walk to the car in the morning and realize I forgot my cell phone. Halfway up the six steps to my apartment and the entire area beneath my backpack is already sticking to my skin.

Five years ago I thought baby powder was something you only used on, you know… babies. These days I have to walk around like Pigpen’s twin brother just to absorb enough moisture to prevent yellow belly button stains from forming on my shirt. It seems pointless to take even lukewarm showers anymore. Standing in a room with that much humidity pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the day. Towels become useless. Undershirts only provide a temporary shield. I stand in front of the fan for fifteen minutes in the vain hope that the Law of Evaporation will somehow combat the Law of the Sweaty Sweatball. And that law states: The volume of sweat emitted shall be directly proportional to the energy expressed attempting to remain dry.

Summer’s the worst, though not because of the higher temperatures. Apparently it’s also a really fun time for people I know to get married. That means getting all dressed up in pants, long-sleeve shirts and jackets at a time when light colors (read: “colors that cannot conceal armpit stains”) are in style. All I can do is try to stand perfectly still so that there is always a good half-inch between my skin and any fabric. I finally started driving to weddings in just my boxer shorts with the A/C on full blast. I get dressed in the parking lot then refuse to sit down in my khaki pants all day long.

I don’t get it. I thought only fat people had this problem. I’ve been trying to get up to my target weight since puberty—which began, coincidentally, that summer at basketball camp. And the worst part is that it’s now become a hereditary issue. My one-year-old daughter is a fit and trim twenty pounds and already she sweats when she eats. Her beautiful shiny red hair becomes a brown matted mess an hour after her bath. Poor kid. I really hope this makes her the envy of all her friends in sixth-grade, but somehow I don’t think girls have the same priorities as boys.