I Love a Dad in a Uniform
Oh Netscape, you caught me with that headline "Only 31% of Men Achieve This By Age 30." What could it be, the ever curious and talking to myself self said? Could it be the ability to use the TV remote while asleep? Winning a fantasy baseball league? Voting for a U.S. presidential candidate who wins the election? The ability to ask for directions when lost?
No, no, no and another no (and an apology for dragging out a hoary old joke, but at least I passed on one's involving premature ejaculation, the need to use Viagra, helping a woman get an orgasm, etc.). Here's what Netscape says: "The true measure of adulthood is not 18 or 21. The true measure of adulthood is reaching these benchmarks: leaving home, finishing school, getting married, having a child, and being financially independent."
So I guess that leaves me with Bone Machine era Tom Waits--I Don't Wanna Grow Up. I mean, Amy and I have chosen not to have children, for all the reasons you might imagine, personal and political, each overlapping and sometimes making excuses for each other. Is it a personal reason or political that we worry that the world is in the hands of those who believe the Rapture is just around the corner, so they fail to worry about wars or the environment, for them and their kind are soon going home, er Home? I don't want to bring a kid into that world, nor do I want to watch my kid deal with that world. It's so nice when the selfish and the caring make a Venn diagram.
It's also heartening that adulthood simply means having kids. Didn't having kids once mean a woman said to a man, "Honey, I told you Saran Wrap wouldn't work?" Doesn't Michael Jackson have kids? (As many as he can get his hands on....)
Notice, too, some of the advice from one of the researchers of this study, "So what can we do to help kids become adults sooner? Furstenberg and his team recommend expansion of military and alternative national service programs."
I'm certain the military would help make more of us adults. Lynndie England and Charles Graner are parents, you know.
No, no, no and another no (and an apology for dragging out a hoary old joke, but at least I passed on one's involving premature ejaculation, the need to use Viagra, helping a woman get an orgasm, etc.). Here's what Netscape says: "The true measure of adulthood is not 18 or 21. The true measure of adulthood is reaching these benchmarks: leaving home, finishing school, getting married, having a child, and being financially independent."
So I guess that leaves me with Bone Machine era Tom Waits--I Don't Wanna Grow Up. I mean, Amy and I have chosen not to have children, for all the reasons you might imagine, personal and political, each overlapping and sometimes making excuses for each other. Is it a personal reason or political that we worry that the world is in the hands of those who believe the Rapture is just around the corner, so they fail to worry about wars or the environment, for them and their kind are soon going home, er Home? I don't want to bring a kid into that world, nor do I want to watch my kid deal with that world. It's so nice when the selfish and the caring make a Venn diagram.
It's also heartening that adulthood simply means having kids. Didn't having kids once mean a woman said to a man, "Honey, I told you Saran Wrap wouldn't work?" Doesn't Michael Jackson have kids? (As many as he can get his hands on....)
Notice, too, some of the advice from one of the researchers of this study, "So what can we do to help kids become adults sooner? Furstenberg and his team recommend expansion of military and alternative national service programs."
I'm certain the military would help make more of us adults. Lynndie England and Charles Graner are parents, you know.
posted by George at 11:30 PM
1 Comments:
I just read the I Love a Dad in a Uniform blog post. Actually, I read your post, then the
article, then the post again, etc. I kept searching for a disclaimer or something that indicated the Netscape article was joke -- and a real knee-slapper at that. Getting married and having children are the benchmarks of adulthood? I really should call the author of this article and invite him to dinner some evening. Perhaps he will be lucky enough to see a repeat of Saturday morning's scene, when my 13-year-old son stomped downstairs at 7:00 a.m. and swung the front door open to yell, "Would you turn that down please!?!" at my 35-year-old husband, who was testing out his new "woofers" in our driveway to the point of, quite literally, rattling our windows.
Ahhh, marriage -- all this and a Nascar calendar hanging in my kitchen...
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