Oh, another three months another blog. I don’t know, I went on a road trip with my buddy, Lucci and was growing pensive about my own immaturity.
It’s important to note that since I’ve been home I’ve been repeatedly mistaken for a high school student. The first such incident was when I was looking for cars with my step-dad. The salesman immediately came to us and ignored me, asking my step-dad what he was looking for. Dave then mentioned it was me looking for a car to which the salesman responded, “Oh! You looking for a car to take to start college?” Yeah, guy. He then got really uncomfortable when I was like “I’m 23” (Yes, I raised my eyebrow and looked disdainfully at him.)
Incident number two happened at the cell phone store. I picked out a phone and was paying for it when the salesmen asked me what my deal was. I told him I had been teaching in Korea and stuff. He immediately became suspicious and asked me, “What you a church guy or something?” I immediately assured him that me going to Korea was purely selfish and also extremely lucrative and he seemed satisfied. He then looked at me suspiciously again and asked, “How old are you anyway?” I told him I was 23, and a salesman who wasn’t even helping us, but was in the stock room behind the register yelled out, “Shiiiiiiittt!”
The final incident involves my job and happened this week. As part of my duties, which…really aren’t that many, I had to make a small presentation to our administrative board about the teen group I run. The administrative board is made up of mostly older men and women, who mostly slept or stared disinterestedly into space during my presentation. Before the meeting they served a small lunch. Now aware of the fact that I look like jail bait, I purposely tried to make myself look professional and older for the meeting. I wore nice clothes, I even brought a messenger bag – a LEATHER messenger bag, to give me that artsy, “I’m better than you” edge. I actually did my hair, and even matched my shoes with my belt. Feeling confidant and early twentiesh, I got into line and was getting sandwiches. Then this lady behind me smiled at me and said, “Wow! It must be nice to get out of school to come to these meetings!” Whatever lady. Whatever.
I guess perhaps my immature appearance is good in a lot of ways though – because emotionally and mentally I feel more like 14 rather than 23, so looking 18, I guess I can kind of split the difference.
It is interesting though that all my friends are kind of becoming a lot more mature. I’m getting turned down for shotguns at parties, people are opting not to go out on weekends in order to have couples nights with wine (in a bottle, not a box). People are getting together, and rather than eating crackers and going to bars they are going out to eat and enjoying each others company. It’s all very strange to me after having spent probably the most wild and immature year of my life in Korea.
I think the real wake up call was at a dinner I went to with some of my friends during our road trip. We were a mixed group of my old friends from college and then some people I had never met before. My friends are grad schoolites and some of their friends were actual real people with real jobs. One of their friends was starting a “grown-up” conversation with Lucci and I and was like, “Do you like wine?” We kind of said yes…because we’ve drunk wine before. The guy then went on to talk about his shady history ,which included drinking non-discriminately in high school… but he did then say he started to refine his taste in his second year of college and drink for the joy of drinking – the taste and texture of alcohol.
It was when he was describing the texture of gin that Lucci and I just kind of looked at each other. My taste is limited to what taste buds Keystone Ice hasn’t destroyed, so I was completely lost. Later in the conversation he started talking about his wife and describing “areas” of Washington D.C. I.e. “That is such a nice area, you’ll like it there.” Or “That area has some great shopping and malls.” My friends were all chortling and chuckling engaged in the alcohol texture conversation (in adult conversation no one laughs, its always derivatives of laughter that don’t involve the diaphragm, like chortling, chuckling, twittering, or tee-heeing, no guffaws involved). I was kind of looking around just totally lost. I felt like when I was young again and needed the booster seat to sit with the adults. I guess being abroad for a year I missed that year of maturity when all of this would make sense to me.
Again this happened to me on the final stop of our trip. I was staying with my friend who is in grad school. We picked up some of her other friends and then headed out to a bar.
If you don’t know guys, then you need it explained that when guys first meet each other they kind of have to cluck it out. It’s basically like a cockfight only with less feathers and more popped collars. Despite years of socialization, men still have to cluck it out to determine alpha male status, especially when girls are involved. Depending on what kind of guy you are it depends on how you cluck. Some guys depend on physicality, some make jokes (yours truly), some depend on chatter and some just stay back and size up the competition. Evidently grad school guys speak in second languages to show you that they deserve alpha dog status. Throughout most of the night there was some kind of romance language flying around – mostly French. Part of this was due to the fact that two of the people in our group were French, but some of it was to prove dominance.
There was actually less French until I accidentally offended this one dude who was American. I made the mistake of talking about the previous night and the adult conversation. I was like “this guy was older and was talking about his wife and areas and it made me feel like I was so old. He was like 25 or 26.” This for some reason offended the guy who automatically was like, “Well how old are you?” I told him, then he was like, “Well I’m 24 and I’m not like that. I’m not like a lame guy. I’m a fun guy. I don’t talk about adult stuff.” He was looking at me this whole time like “How dare you judge me. I’m not like a regular mom, I’m a cool mom.” I had no idea why he was raising his voice at me, so I kind of ignored him for a while.
We then went to another bar – the town’s “Grad School Bar.” Again I felt like I need a booster seat as we walked in and my eyes were assaulted by a vista of people wearing scarves with no function, headscarves, Tina Fey Glasses, Tweed and skinny jeans. Everyone was seated quietly talking and drinking foreign beer. I had no idea places like this existed in college towns – places wear “penny pitchers” were as foreign as the beer everyone was drinking. We took a seat in a small room and drank our beer and talked. It wasn’t just talking though, it was like discussion. Like politics, social issues and foreign relations. In-between the discussion there were moments of French and Italian swirling around. For the second time in two days I was looking around thinking, “Did I miss something? Since when do you go to bars to talk about important stuff?” I also reaped the reward of offending the French Speaking American as he and his group ostracized me. My friend was engaged in discussion about Middle East foreign relations, so I did what anyone would do…
I played Ms. Pac-Man on my phone. I was pretty thrilled to discover I could play it, I had no idea it was even on there.
By the end of the night, walking home, I was kind of starting to wonder if maybe I am just like 10 steps behind on the whole maturity thing. Is it wrong that I like to go out to bars and talk about nonsense or play flip cup? That I don’t have a wife or live in an “area’ and have no desire to in the immediate future?
My thoughts were interrupted however when a college student stumbled out a bar and ran into me.
“Shouldn’t you be at home studying for the SAT,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment