Adulting

 

Don’t tell me to grow up. It’s never going to happen. Who wants to grow old gracefully when disgracefully is much more appealing?

 

I don’t mean you should completely neglect all your responsibilities – you should still pay your boring bills and feed your fam – but if growing up means to lose your curiosity about the world, as it so often does, then I’m all out. I believe that if we all managed to retain a little sense of wonder in everything around us, and stopped sneering and complaining, the world might be a better place to live in. Dress the way you want; cut your hair the way you like; have a tattoo; laugh a lot. Trust me, you’ll be happier. Keeping a young outlook will allow you to approach everything with new eyes. And take risks – everything can be an adventure.

 

I’m childish – I like toys and stupid jokes. I like to dance in the kitchen. I like to sing loudly in my car. I am endlessly curious about anything and everything. I like to keep an open mind. Numerous other things about me aren’t ‘typical’ of my age. But I got to thinking – is ‘childishness’, the ability to move with the times, retaining youthful thinking, and risk taking more common in my own generation? After a bit of very unscientific research involving other Gen Xers, I had to conclude that it might be. Why?

 

Let’s start with books. A student of mine produced her ‘Topsy and Tim’ books. She was delighted when I showed her my full collection of their classic adventures. However, we soon discovered that in 1976, Topsy and Tim’s adventures were not the nice little ‘first-day-at -school-where-the-coat-gets-put-on-the-wrong-peg-but-the -lovely-teacher-finds-it-immediately’ scenarios. Oh no. In my collection, Topsy and Tim go hill walking and have to survive on chocolate until they are found by mountain rescue. They get lost in the fog. They witness a pool attendant slip and bang his head on a wet floor; they nearly drink bleach, get locked in a side-car, play around an old fridge and risk being trapped inside, and they see a friend run out in front of a car. Folks: Gen X was feral. We played outside all day until it was dark. We played on waste ground; we hung around shops and parks; we walked to school on our own and we never had a phone, so no-one knew where we were until we rocked up in time for Findus Crispy Pancakes for Tea and Monkey Magic on the telly. Danger was all around us and we weren’t sheltered from the grisly details – Death stalked the Dark and Lonely Waters, escalators could chew our faces off if we fell and don’t get me started on frisbees and sub-stations… But maybe this is what is responsible for the Gen X sense of adventure? After all, we survived against the odds, so what the hell? 

 

I was lucky enough to live my 20s through the musical and cultural revolution of the 90s. We had jobs, we had houses of our own, and we had no other responsibilities, so we made the most of it. We felt free of societal pressures to ‘settle down’ at a certain age. At 30, I was still going to clubs and dancing the night away – the towns and cities had a pulse and never shut down. Walking home in the early hours was nothing out of the ordinary. We stayed younger, longer. Maybe we got used to it?

 

Crucially, there was no Tiktok, no insta; we were without the constant pressure to live our lives on film, recording, but never really living the moment. If we wanted to know something, we had to look it up in a book. Sometimes we had to research it in several books. No AI summaries for us – we don’t trust our first source – we looked into it as thoroughly as possible before drawing a conclusion. Perhaps that explains our ongoing curiosity about everything and anything, and our innate ability to think critically – a dying skill, sadly.

 

I seem to be over-romanticising the past – far from it. There were as many negatives about the 70s, 80s and 90s as positives. I’m just trying to consider the collective ‘personality’ of Gen X to explain why they seem to be less grown-up than their own kids. Perhaps we were the last generation to be truly ‘free to do what we want, to have a good time, to get loaded’ without someone snapping it on their phones? We got away with it all. Maybe it made us feel invincible? 

 

Or am I just hopelessly immature? 

Anyway - I really must get my halloween costume out ready for the party on Saturday...