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09/07/2007: "The First Of Many Crotchety Old Man Rants"

Music: Gogol Bordello
Mood: got the day off

I was talking to someone I work with about how punk rock I used to be/am and mentioned how I attended my first punk show at the Rat back in '91. This guy was floored by the fact that I have been going to shows since he was 4 years old. This kid was born two years after "Appetite For Destruction" came out fer chrissakes! He also mentioned that his cousin who is roughly my age, is still listening to punk music and living the lifestyle. This got me to thinking about myself and my relation to my own adulthood.

At first I thought, "Wow, when is that guy going to grow up?" Then I looked at myself. I am chronologically an adult human male, yet I still wear T-shirts with humorous slogans or band names on them. Did this other guy and I somehow miss the adulthood boat? I pay my bills, I go to work, but I don't go around in a suit and tie. Am I supposed to or was that just a fashion fad that every man in the earlier parts of the twentieth century followed? I was talking to my old chum the Right Hon. Rev. Josiah A. Perkins earlier today about this. The Right Hon. Rev. said that at this stage of the game, people are growing apart, splintering into ever smaller groups yet at the same time we have all become more tolerant.

Is there such a thing as an adult anymore? Was there ever such a thing? Or am I what an adult is in the absence of war, pestilence, plague and famine, at a time when, in the immortal words of Hard Harry, the protagonist of a teen movie once aimed at my age bracket, "all the great themes have been used up, turned into theme parks???"