Today your are a ...

Coming of age is a load of crap. The whole idea of the coming of age movie or time of life or that one magic issue or challenge that makes you a man or a woman instead of a child is bollix. I don't think I ever had one of these times or moments. Nat says I was never a kid. I've gotten that many times. When I was an adolescent, my friends said I was more mature than my parents.

There was a time when people were born, grew up, worked on the farm, got sick, then died. They were too busy trying to stay alive to worry about middle school bullshit. The great philosopher Phebe from Friends once said (from memory) "When I was homeless, a guy offered to give me food if I would have sex with him. That is a problem. You guys are dealing with a bunch of middle school BS."

Religions are full of coming of age business. There is a tribe in Africa that circumcises young men at age thirteen. That sucks. American Indians had hunts or other forms of mutilation that I've heard in passing over the years. The ongoing theme of things is that one has to go through a challenge of some kind to be proven worthy of such an honer of being called an adult. I do not remember ever going through such a task. A bunch of stuff just kind of happened to me and gradually, I started calling myself an adult.

There was a podcast from NPR where an out of work guy let his son drop out of high school because he had a real problem with people and administration. The catch was, they had to sit down and watch movies together and talk about them. They wrote a book about it. Not a bad home schooling. The father swears his son has a much better attitude about learning now than he did while he was still in public school. The son was 22 at the time of the interview and headed to Vienna to attend a film school.

That story above smells like a coming of age story. Not really. It seemed to fit here. I wonder if there is a reason the son did not fit in with any of the clicks and thus was an outcast. I know I had the hardest time fitting in anywhere. Hell, today I fit in with hard boiled geeks and blue collar cops. I never would have figured that one.

When I look back on school, I only feel disdain for all the other people I knew. There may be a couple exceptions. For the most part, I hated it. I didn't get it. I wanted out. College wasn't much better. Work is not bad. For some reason work is easier than school ever was. Not easier. I understand it better. I get it. The rules are geared to help people get along for the most part.

I suppose it all boils down to milestones. We celebrate success at different times. School, we celebrate at the end. Plays, we celebrate opening night. It might be the last chance.