My friends are children. And, like, 90% of my life? I'm a child, too. I'm the biggest child. I define my entire existance with comic book metaphors. And that's who I am. Most of the time I spend as an adult, I am pretending. And I have hollowed out this life where that's all i need to do. Be a man child most of the time and when it's time to put on a tie and talk in the grown-up voice, I put on that mask and then when the bell rings I run home and throw the mask and tie on the floor. The thing is, as much as it scares the shit out of me, sometimes it's nice to be an adult. A whole person. Because I will always have the heart of a knight errant and the brain made of crayons, but being an adult who is made of those things instead of a little boy inside a man-suit? It's kind of nice.
I have a new boss. Well, a new interim boss, since my last boss quit. And he's a little more organized and by-the-book business. And, strangely, I kind of like it. I mean I'm running around trying to clean up my shiz, and to get on his level and file all my paperwork in binders and such and sort out all the piles and whatnot. But in the transition, I have some more responsibilities. Nothing I haven't done in some capacity, before, but it's a bunch of stuff I have done from time to time that is now mine. It belongs to me. And maybe this is just because I haven't fallen behind, yet, but I find myself sort of glad of the challenge/rising to the occasion. Which is weird, for me. Because most of my time I spend in shorts, shooting lasers at the old crik to scare up some frogs I kin race. Pew Pew! Or hiding under a rock ignoring the state of the world and being annoyed by politics and/or sports. Or just with my nose buried in a comic/book. All I'm saying is, sometimes, when I come home I find myself putting the man-suit away on it's hanger gently, and with a touch of reverence. It's getting so it doesn't always feel like pretending. Until I am in the presence of some real suity-suit business dudes and then I feel like a fraud. But not a phony, is what I'm getting at. I can survive as a grown-up for multiple hours and do so without being a FAKE. I try to remind myself that most people don't know what they're doing, either. That they're winging it just as much as I am and making it up as they go along.
Then I remember they went to college.
So, anyway. My friends are children. Well, my Delaware friends. And as much as I enjoy their company, they're sort of an embarrassment, by and large. I had my little brother down for the holidays, and I was somewhat ashamed to bring him around with them, because they're so dreadfully immature. God forbid I ever date another girl and have to introduce her to these rapscallions, because it didn't work out so well with the last girl I dated. To whom my friends were simply a separate thing which she wanted no part of.
And I like them, my friend-babies. I really do, or we would not be friends, but I do wish that they would show some signs of progress. Some evolutionary indicator. Any confirmation that they have the capacity for growth. As scary as the growing pains are for me, I feel better when I find others that are wrestling with the same troubles I am, about figuring out how to be a full fledged human. It's nice to know I'm not the only one without a manual. And I'd like to see them get there, too. I would like us to still be friends when we all grow up. But I would also like some grown up friends I can go to museums and plays and such with, and not have to worry about them getting ice-cream drips on the paintings. I'm still going to want to stop at the comic store on the way home, but come on. It's on the WAY. We're passing RIGHT BY IT anyway...
my dinner tonight was pieces of cheddar cheese with slices of turkey that I ate while standing up in the kitchen. So classy. No wonder all my friends are so adult and refined.
