INNOCENCE COSTS
In 2008 there were 350,000 children under the age of 18 serving time in jail in the United States, there were more than 720,000 teen pregnancies (80% of which were unwanted or unintended) and over 5,000 drivers under the age of 20 were killed in car accidents. These are definitely severe examples, but American youth is about making stupid booboos that scar over into the calluses of adulthood.
However, it is a common misconception that one traumatic event is a eureka moment of everlasting maturity. Humans are habitual dunces, and bad ideas have a tendency to work like Jenga blocks. Cutting corners and taking risks becomes a test of creativity, until inevitably all the little wood blocks collapse (at which point we vow never to take such “immature” risks again whilst simultaneously setting the pieces up for another round). In this way, growing up is about learning how to eat crow, humble pie and shit, while still showing up to play again tomorrow.
I live in Los Angeles where there are roughly 3.2 million parking tickets issued a year. The city collects $113 million annually due to parking citations alone. In any given year I am responsible for at least a few thousand of those dollars. This is not because I am a terrible parker or because I accumulate, say, fifty $40 meter violations in 12 months. No, no, this is the handy work of letting a handful of tickets double, then triple then go to collections where they accumulate a collector’s fee for a few months. Every time this happens and I inevitably cowboy up and head to the downtown courthouse checkbook in hand. I stand in line behind an army of angry, slighted, suffering Angelinos (just like me). I then cut a check for a few months rent or a down payment on a car or a few semesters at community college; enough to level my savings to a pancaked flat line. Every time I vow, I honestly commit to myself,
“No way dude, never again. You’re a grown up now, man. Grown ups don’t do this.”
As the tickets pile up again the same unexplainable ridicules behavior piles up right along side. This is not growing up; this is just stupid.
If I changed my behavior I wouldn’t be any more “grown up”…just less broke. Growing up, it seems, is learning that no amount of assumed responsibility can suddenly propel you into the realm of adulthood. It’s about coming to terms with your bone headed tendencies and moving past the ones that you can while enjoying the ever quickening momentum of mortality. Growing up is about taking what you get and going with it, as simple as that may seem. It’s about facing the day clueless with a handful of fellow hopefuls and being brave enough to pretend you are not all terrified.
It’s about yelling at the gods from the top of the mountain, “Yeah, I may have to push this rock up this hill for eternity, but I’d rather have balls than be an angel!”
There are plenty of people who move past their pitfalls and remain imbecilic teenage-minded thirtysomethings. There are plenty adult minded folk who are still crippled by repeated stupid investments (sub-prime mortgages, bad college loans, car notes). Do these tremendously overbearing mistakes automatically grant them the title of adult?
More than 5,000 small businesses declared bankruptcy last month. On average 56% of American entrepreneurs don’t make it past the first three years of commerce. Bad decisions are what the American dream is all about. Finding happiness regardless is what growing up is all about.
THE SUM OF SOME PARTS
When life hands me brain pudding, I make dehydrated coconut oil, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, gray matter, cocoa powder and tri-calcium phosphate out of it. It offers me a sense of control; if I can take something apart I can understand it and reconstruct it in a way that is more conducive to my interpretation of reality.
When I was a child I would pull apart my toys. I had boxes full of bike and skateboard parts never to roll again. The Dalai Lama takes watches apart to help him meditate on the vastness of the universe. American football fans systematically separate their favorite teams and get them into “fantasy” leagues.
Deconstruction is a good first step to reconstruction. High school anatomy classes use dissection because it is the most accurate way to explain muscular and skeletal structure.
There are of course many things that would be better left misunderstood and intact. The first few years of most presidencies, for example, are mostly devoted to picking apart the hard work of the previous administration. When Clinton left office with a $230 million surplus in 2000, the Bush administrations first response was to pick apart this progress to better understand what their financial strategy should be. Unfortunately had they “stayed the course” the national debt could have been paid off by 2012.
Many of the relationships I have had would probably have stood a better chance with out me picking at them. Most of my wounds would probably heal nicely had I not been so enamored with what happens when I unravel my sutures.
Questioning leaves nasty scars. I have been picking at a fresh scab for the last week.
One of my oldest and dearest friends, a girl with whom I spent a substantial portion of my youth kinda sorta romantically involved with, was murdered while traveling the country conducting research for a project she was working on (living free and independently together) and I can’t help but ponder the what ifs.
If someone in New Orleans had been paid to counsel parents on the importance of physical interactions and reading out loud to their infants, if those parents took that advice to heart, if those parents made enough money to give their child every ounce of education, every sports uniform and every toy for every birthday if that kid never felt alone, awkward or deprived, if that kid didn’t turn into a desperate teenager who felt alienated and forgotten by a country hell-bent on neglecting its desperately impoverished, if that teenager was taught how to deal with anger and depression in a constructive way by someone sincere and reliable.
If there were better streetlights in the 9th ward.
If in 1965 when the Mississippi gulf outlet was completed, someone would have noticed that it intensified the power of hurricanes by more than 20%. If the levees didn’t break; if FEMA and the president hadn’t avoided and mismanaged every element of recovery.
If they had seen my friend’s smile when she used to hold my little sister, or when she talked about social equality.
If someone, anyone, along the way had seen this person and shown them a fraction of the love that her friends felt for the woman they murdered, maybe there would have been a different outcome, and she would still be alive.
Deconstruction like this only works to reconstruct whatever trauma inspired it. Taking apart reality in this way leaves me with an unfortunate result; the world is laid out in front of me in nice pieces, each one detached and disassembled, and I can’t for the life of me remember how to put them back together in a way that works.
Controlling things has little to do with understanding them and even less to do with taking them apart. Football teams still lose regardless of a fantasy league. The Dalai Lama is still left with piles of springs and no answers, and I am left with one less friend and a thousand more questions.
Sara R.
1984-2008
R.I.P