Sometimes I am taken aback by my childishness. I know where my arrested development comes from; I can chart it, understand it, explain it to others, recover from the shortcomings it propagates within me and my behavior. I know it intimately enough to have safeguards and contingencies in place when it affects my life in some minor or major way. I know it’s a malady; I am aware of it as though it were a hump on my back. I know it’s there.

But knowing it’s there, knowing it’s a problem, doesn’t fix it; doesn’t stifle it; doesn’t make it go away. I am a child in a man’s body, in a man’s life, and it is terrifyingly frustrating. I am a child playing at being an adult.

Monday I had the day off work after a seven-day workweek, so I took my car to a service center that I prefer down in Mission Valley and left it in their care while I walked around the shopping centers and saw a movie. I bought a graphic novel, a book for my wife, a few shirts for me and two new wristbands. I put way too much salt and butter on my popcorn, drank my soda too fast, and had to learn how to walk again after the lights came up in the auditorium as the credits for Hardcore Henry started to roll. I walked back to the service center and picked up my car, new brakes, rotors, a full wash later, and paid the exceptionally reasonable fee for the service. I drove home and put away my new things and within minutes my wife was home. I called for a pizza and left again in the car, went to the bank to buy quarters, then got the pizza, some sodas, and came back home. We ate on the couch, watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, then she went to sleep. My friend Jenna came by at 9 and we watched Fear the Walking Dead and the subsequent episode of Talking Dead. We ate chips and queso, caught up on one another’s lives, and when the shows were over, she left. I was in a great mood all day. I felt so good, and it was something past just having the day off work. What was so great?

I took my car to the service station and got the brakes fixed. After knowing they were a problem for the past eight months or so, I finally did the adult thing and got them fixed. I Adulted!!

You don’t know what that means to me; to adult. It sends me in a tailspin every time I do it. First, the kid in me sees me do it and guffaws “Oh Golly, Mister! You sure are something else, aren’t ya?” Then the adult in me remarks how preposterous it is that it was so remarkable to any part of me at all, scolding “Do you think you deserve a fucking medal, you juvenile halfwit? That’s not how Life works, asshole.”

Tonight I got home from work around six, spent some time with the wife until she went to sleep, then took a shower and put on pajamas. I considered calling or texting a friend to see what’s up, what’s going down, who’s hanging sideways? I stared at my phone and hoped someone would text me with some opportunity too golden to pass up, some chance to feel alive, to remind me that we’re not dead, not buried, not running on fumes as our fuselage coasts soundlessly into the afterlife. But I couldn’t bear myself to push the buttons, and apparently I am not the name on the lips of all the cool kids and mover/shakers. So here I am, in my pajamas, listening to music, reading, and writing. The writing is from this:

I’m standing before my refrigerator, slowly making a sandwich that I don’t actually want, wondering what I could/would do if I were doing something/anything. My mind begins to wonder if this is it: the last days of my carefree youth. No more late-night shenanigans, bars, pubs, clubs, and trendy eateries. No more afterhours parties with new faces in strange places full of cheap whiskey and hosts that refuse to wear pants, talking passionately about art, politics, and the fucking audacity of this generation of entitled douchebags behind us snapping at our heels to inherit a world that we didn’t think we were done fucking up. No more fun; just sandwiches and adult bedtimes. And I felt a lump catch in my throat. Nothing devastating; not that bawl that erupts as the earth cracks open and Satan and all his jerk friends come a-picking and a-stabbing with their charcrusted tridents. Just the dissatisfied whimper of a child.

A child. A young human without the experience or wisdom to garner the proper coping mechanisms required to deal with things not going their way. The world not adhering unwaveringly to their unsubmitted script, flubbing the lines it hadn’t the luxury of seeing before the Little Dictator shouted “action”. Things not happening the way they should, things ending, things being denied them, things being impossible. I am the child whimpering because it is tired or hungry and either unqualified or unwilling to address these pedestrian needs. So it cries, because it doesn’t like what is happening to it, doesn’t agree with it, doesn’t want it… but can’t make it stop.

I am a child playing at being an adult. And I know that one day it will be over: my youth. I will be to the point where I shouldn’t be out all hours of the night, every night, throwing back rocket fuel and throwing my head back in uproarious laughter at jokes as inappropriate as they are unfunny. I will be to the point where the music can’t be heard correctly at any volume, where my eyes will hardly focus to read the small print on a book of any actual merit, and making a sandwich will involve whispered discussions about the wisdom of allowing me to wield a butterknife and ending somehow with a large print hardcover copy of a James Patterson novel being wrapped up in the bag with the remaining portion of the loaf of sliced bread and my glasses in the freezer. In short, I am considering the inevitability of 1) My not being able to do exactly what I want when I want to, and 2) Things ending.

And it really, really pisses me off. I think of death, constantly. Not in a fearful “Oh I hope I don’t die” or “I hope SoandSo doesn’t die” kind of way, but in a “Damnit, I’m going to die and Mom’s going to die and Mer is going to die and this is bullshit! Why wasn’t I consulted on this? I have some differing opinions!” We run and run and try and try and build and make and misstep and correct and we paint these perfect little lives that will end and ultimately mean nothing. If you’re reading this right now then you have some understanding of who I am and what I’ve tried to do in my life but another 99% of the population of Earth has no idea or care to, or frankly any need to do. Not only is my life of no meaning to them, it is inconsequential. It doesn’t affect them, it has no effect on them, and theirs has little to none on me. Our lives don’t mean much to the world, but to us, individually, our lives are the whole world. My living and breathing and thinking and feeling and seeing and knowing are all I know of the world and when I end so will all of those things.

Most people, I believe, are not so foolish or misinformed as to think that they will live forever. They know, too, that they will die. But in my humble opinion not nearly enough of them are running as though burning from their homes with their faces streaked with tears screaming “This is bullshit!!!” You are not nearly pissed off enough at the inevitability of your world.

Or maybe I’m wrong, and adults have found mechanisms to cope with this inescapable punctuation, and these are the ramblings of a confused and ignorant child.

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