Growing Up with Generation X

Mike's post tonight got me thinking. Almost everyone I know (or at least those I associate with) who is about my age seems to feel the same way, in one sense or another - to wit, that we aren't "grown up" yet.

Maybe it comes from the fact that the adults in our lives (at least in my life) always seemed larger than life. My father wore size 75 EEE shoes, to my 9 wides, if you get my drift.

It really hit me when we bought this house. The question I kept on asking myself was, "what on earth am *I* doing buying a house?!?! Isn't that something that grown-ups do?" And not just any house - the house we live in now is just a little smaller than the house I grew up in in Seal Beach - the house my father purchased as a Grown Up Man at the age of 46. What am I doing with a house like this? At my age? And a new one, to boot?

The longer we've lived here the more comfortable I've felt - especially when I realize the people who live around me (in similar houses) are "normal" people - not the giants of my youth, and they seem to manage to make it work, too.

It seems there is some great rulebook of the cosmos, and I and many other people my age aren't following it. No, not one bit. Even at the age of (almost) 35.

It's not just the big, scary financial decisions about life, either. At a time when it seems that my favorite TV show should be something like the McNeill-Lehrer Hour, I watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That great cosmic rulebook says that at 34 and 358/365ths, I should be watching boring, "adult" movies (hey, get your mind out of the gutter - not *those* kind of "adult" movies), but I find I'm beside myself with anticipation for the final installment of the "Star Wars" series, and don't get me started on every single Pixar film that comes out. I should spend my time at my computer following my stock options, but I spend it blogging and playing Half-Life. When the rulebook says a man my age should spend his days on the golf course, I break out my Legos. (No offense to any duffers out there - I just can't afford another expensive hobby).

Well, you know what I think of that Cosmic Rulebook?

That's right, screw it.

I refuse to take life lying down, to give up and curl up and die halfway into my life expectancy. I think that's what I've always seen "grown-ups" as - people who have died on the inside, and who don't have the good common decency to fall over and stop using up the air the rest of us need.

Perhaps sucking the marrow from life is a rare luxury - I realize there are people who are faced with real problems, real issues, really scary things that keep them tied down, emotionally, spiritually, financially, psychologically.

But I do believe that Jesus wasn't bluffing when He said He came to bring us life, and life abundantly.

There's only so much of it, and we have to make the best of it.



I gotta go. I'm finishing up a new spaceship with my Legos.