Owning the New Kids On The Block Greatest Hits Doesn’t Make Me Lame

This week I purchased black nail polish. I’m not really a makeup junkie. When I do wear it, its mostly eye shadow and mascara. I had fake nails for about 6 months until it became too costly, too time consuming, and the touch screen on my iPod wouldn’t recognize them. Not only did I buy the black nail polish, but over the top of it I added silver and blue sparkles. I like to think of it as the Starry Night version of fingers. Being an artist by nature (and occasionally by trade) these whims strike me now and then. My hair happens to be fire engine red at the moment and I have been known to buy extraordinarily inappropriate shoes if they are cute enough. What my foray into the world of nail modification made me realize is that I haven’t actually changed that much since I was 18.

Sure, I’m a lot more educated, I’m a little taller, I can vote, drink, and have more credit cards than those teen years. I’ve had many more experience, been through a lot of pain and struggle, but on the whole I don’t really think that a lot has changed. More importantly, I am starting to recognize that no one else is really growing up either.

When you’re a kid, you think that things would be so much better if you were an adult. Adults always tell kids to enjoy childhood; that it’s the best time in their lives. Kids don’t have jobs or a family to provide for or bills to pay. The problem is that adults look at childhood through the eyes of a complicated adult world. Sure, now all we want is to play on a swing set, take a nap, or go to school to learn multiplication tables. But we forget that being a kid sucks. You have all these people telling you what to do ALL the time. You have absolutely no control over where you can go, what you can do, or how to do it. At best, you can dream about the day when you have your own money that you can blow on video games and toys and a car that can drive you to Disney World whenever you want (so maybe I was shallow as a little kid). At any rate, you know that you are going to be a better adult than the one’s telling you what to do all the time.

The problem is that adults pull a Jekyll and Hyde on kids. When you’re little, adults seem to have it better because they have control over their lives. It’s not until you are an adult yourself (or a reasonable facsimile of one) that you discover that grownups are just big kids with bank accounts. We still want things that are bad for us (have you had a Bison Bacon Cheeseburger from Ruby Tuesdays? Damn, that thing is good) and we still want to play (the first people I knew to get a Wii was a 65 year old couple).

I had this notion that when I grew up, I would have the resources to be a force in the world. I would have adult conversations about philosophy and politics, and we would all band together to make sure that we were leading society in the right direction. Apparently my utopia only exists in novels and sitcoms.

Recently I was the leader of a group project: four adults coming together to analyze a proposal and make a presentation. These are educated individuals with jobs and families. Do you remember in fifth grade when the teacher made you work with the kid who picked his nose, that girl who was always in detention, and the boy who had so many allergies that he was only in school twice a week? Those kids became adults too, but now that guy scratches his balls, the girl got knocked up three times, and the allergies have turned into migraines and gallstones. And you still have to turn in something at the end of the week. Let’s just say I’m glad that class is over.

What all this has taught me is that no one is any better at life than I am. It’s all still the playground and we all have different ways to occupy our time. Some of us like to play house and some of us like to play graduate student. And actually, now that I have a car and can drive myself to Disney World and eat bacon cheeseburgers whenever I want, I’m starting to question why adults bitch so much in the first place.

So I paint my nails black and sparkly, my car looks like it was made by Tonka, and I have two dogs that are small enough for me to dress in Halloween costumes and sweaters. The games might have changed, but not the mentality. I guess the next time a boy hits me on the playground I’ll know he likes me.