Grown up?

My friend, the suitably stunning XUP (which stands for Ex Urban Pedestrian), has a thought provoking post up over at her fine blog. It's all about grown ups and whether we perceive ourselves to be 'grown ups' as our adulthood advances. It sounds stodgy but in her hands the topic is deftly handled and well written, as usual.

My take on it is that even though I may be an adult, at times I don't consider myself to be a grown up. And that's not a bad thing. I think of grown ups as uptight adults who worry constantly and are miserable over the least little thing. They have serious jobs and serious personalities to go along with them. And most importantly they have long ago lost the ability to enjoy life, crack a joke, especially at their own expense, and to just be in the moment.

One Christmas many years ago after Sparky and I got together her brother who lives in Texas came in to visit and he brought his wife and four kids with him. I had a blast getting to know the kids, we hung out and I joked around with them and took them sledding when it snowed and I played cards and board games with them, as did Sparky. In the midst of all this holiday fun I over heard her dad tell her brother that he thought I was an over grown kid sometimes. I'm sure he didn't mean it in a mean or insulting way and I didn't take it in that way either, in fact, I took it as a compliment because even though I was in my mid 30's and working a demanding grown up job, I was still able to push aside the bullshit of the grown up world and enjoy the time we had with the kids while they were young.

I recently had the displeasure of reconnecting with an old acquaintance from college on Facebook, whose name is John B. This guy was an obnoxious conservative Republican back then and the ensuing years have only made him worse. He always struck me as one of those people who were born grown up because he always had the ability to suck the joy out of every situation by injecting his pompous political posturing in any given situation (which may sound strange coming from me since I blog a lot about politics and I have an opinion I will share with you on every political subject but in my defense, I know when to shut the hell up about it and just be in the moment). Anyhoo, one day I put on my Facebook wall that I was going to play disc golf, which must have pissed off John because he made a snide remark along the lines of me never having grown up in response to that posting. And in another post about me wanting to win the Powerball jackpot he said he hoped I wouldn't because if I did then it might make me hate myself since obviously all progressives must hate rich people (which we don't as long as they didn't get rich by exploiting others or polluting the earth). Luckily, he dropped me as a Facebook friend before I had the chance to dump him. My point is he is just the type of person who is a 'grown up' in my book, because he's grown up and let life and his politics make him miserable.

As I get older I hear people talk about and fetishize the 1970's and '80's and I think to myself, "Holy shit, that time period seems like just yesterday to me. I'm getting old." But then I remember that even though I may be getting older and have adult responsibilities and duties, I'm still not a grown up and I'll never ever be one.