By Elsie Stone
If there’s anything that four years’ work at a retirement village, a dozen Judd Apatow movies and too many cheesy Hallmark birthday cards have taught me, it’s that we Never Grow Up - age is just a number, and Maturity is a Myth. It’s a promise that we all cling to, because surely the only good thing about getting older is that we can still be this awesome when we’re fifty.
What I’ve started to think lately though, is that maybe it’s all a lie. Is the Myth of Maturity is just an excuse that adults use when they want to act like fuckwits? It doesn’t feel like a Myth right now, it feels far too true; I’m starting to feel, and act, Mature. Unfortunately, feeling and acting Mature seems to feel a lot like feeling and acting Boring. Maybe we tell ourselves that age is just a number to hide the scary truth that maturity sucks all of the best things out of life.
The other day, I stored a tissue up my sleeve. I took recyclable bags to New World, and I learned to mop. I’ve actually managed to maintain a successful day-planner for a whole week now, and I’ve got a bedtime. I’m a person on the cusp of potentially being all of the things that I’ve been willing myself to be for the last fews years of my life - a Mature Adult - a person who shops at Briscoes and has purse-sized Purell. But even though my hands are the most germ-resistant that they’ve ever been, I can’t be pleased about it because it’s starting to feel like the rest of my life has been sanitised as well.
I was twelve when I first discovered what Maturity felt like - because my friends and I were religiously reading Dolly Doctor, and all the boys were still addicted to Goosebumps. I feel a similar thing now when I’m with people who are still living at home - as if a massive gulf separates us, as if I now know about shit that Actually Matters, and they do not. I feel Beyond the living at home stage of my life - and Beyond people who are still in that stage.
Not only is feeling “beyond” incredibly, unforgivably pretentious of me - it turns me into the scornful and boring kind of person that I never want to be. What kind of awesome person thinks that Goosebumps sucks? NO KINDS. Maturity ruins all the fun.
But yesterday, something happened. I finally fulfilled my long-term goal to re-watch A Cinderella Story, and bask in the unbelievable incredibleness that is Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray in a cyber-relationship. It was shit. It was really, really bad - totally stupid and ridiculous and not funny at all. Chad Michael Murray spoke in this weird whisper the whole time, plus, his name is Chad. CHAD. I couldn’t believe pre-teen me lapped up all that disgusting bullshit.
The only good that came from the experience was a) I got to eat popcorn, and b) I realised that there is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling Beyond something. It’s madness that I would choose to watch A Cinderella Story when I’m only halfway through season four of Breaking Bad.
When there’s so much new shit to care about in life, it just makes sense not to give a fuck about any of the old shit. I’m not really becoming boring, I’m just constantly reaching new stages of life, and concentrating on them - as opposed to staying stuck of whatever happened before. You can’t blame someone for being Over their current life when the possibilities of Lives to Come are so fucking great.
Maturity is a lie - I know because of all the middle-aged ladies who get pissed with their friends and dance to cover bands at the Bog on Friday nights. We don’t, and can’t, change - it’s the things that we care about that do. And in the end, it’s stupid to think that I could grow up to be someone who doesn’t get pissed at the Bog on a Friday night. Of course I will.
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