[Inigo Montoya] Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. [/Inigo Montoya]
Lets just get to our topic, eh?
I am a 29 year old
Man child. mah-n chai-eld. Def: Essentially a guy, ages 25-3?, that for one reason or another can't seem to get their shit together.
Now, the "getting their shit together" deserves further elaboration. This can mean any number of things. It can mean they gather collection agencies notices like action figures, continually struggle to make rent when there is no reason for it, have a pile of laundry so high you would catch a nosebleed if you climbed to the top, etc, etc. I know many man childs? men children? man chilluns? Whatever the plural form is. Honestly, it seems like a good majority of my generation are plagued with this malady. I don't really know the cause of it. I've never been good with anthropology, or sociology. I'm just no good with -ologies, but the fact remains. A lot of guys have a hard time acting their age. Thing is, being a man child isn't really the worst lot in life. If you don't pay your bills on time, you tend to have more money in your pocket. If you have piles of clothes, you don't have to suffer through the utter mundanity of doing laundry... much. If you have lots of collection agencies after your ass, you have... I dunno, a bunch of neat, multi-colored envelopes. In between, you probably play a lot of Xbox, smoke weed, drink heavily, and collect toys that you insist people refer to as 'figures'. Again, all pretty good stuff in moderation but when done obsessively...
By and large, this is not an attractive look to women. As you get older, your childish antics don't get more endearing, they get kinda, well, pathetic. OK, so yes, as the universe dictates, there are women childs. They definitely exist. But if you are both saddled with the same issue(s), why would you want to be together? You wouldn't get anything done! You would be like this void of discarded clothes and debt. Shit, maybe that's your thing. But I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess for most - it isn't. As that sagacious feline MC Skat Kat has told me many times over in my Walkman when I was 10, Opposites Attract. Which brings us back to the issue at hand - manchildness is not attractive. If you don't care about your general well-being you might as well start early with not caring about female companionship. That is the cold hard fact, guys and dolls. Not a very bright future there, is it? You won't be needing any shades where you're going.
At the crux of the man child epidemic is the inability to handle money in a responsible way. If you have managed to make it out of your parents cellar (you 20-something Boo Radley you!) then you most likely now live with a roommate(s) and have bills that need to be paid monthly. Hopefully, you are capable of meeting those deadlines. If not, you are quite the weight on your housemates and they might be plotting to put some hemlock in your next peach bellini. Just like Socrates. So watch out. Poisoning aside, the second downside to man childry is that you can't save money. That means no big trips. You wanna see the world? Download Google Earth. Or play Risk. Or become an astronaut. But thats not very likely, is it? As travel is very unlikely, so is the possibility of you becoming a cosmopolitan with a broad worldview. Going new places and meeting new people promotes growth - which is something the man child needs badly.
Whats been left unsaid thus far is this is birthed from the canal of immaturity, of selfishness. A lack of maturity is what perpetuates these habits beyond the years in which they are seen as cute, endearing or acceptable. At 15, your antics are cute and relatively consequence free. At 27, Like it or not, your development is arrested and not even Tobias Fünke himself can save you from it. Problem is, being immature can be fun and its very nature prevents you from possessing the foresight necessary to see how this could be a big ol' wrench in the clockwork of a long and successful life. It is indeed a vicious cycle. Like one of those old timey bikes but with like knives for handlebars or something.
If you do tend to wear these aforementioned tendencies on your unwashed sleeve, you have more than likely experienced people, some younger than you, treat you as something below them. Its likely that they are obsessed with looking older than they really are and you, well we've covered that already. Its a very humbling, if not humiliating experience. In the end, everyone is playing a role. They are trying on their grown-up pants a little early, and you are still looking for yours in a pile of soiled laundry. That said, this is just another in a long line of ugly inevitabilities to the man child epidemic.
So, I'm going to stop here. Mainly, because my tears are making the keys very slippery. But let me be serious for a minute. My intent was not to provide ways in which you can pull yourself from this dense, deep chasm of man childry Jack London style. In large part due to the fact that I myself am just developing the skills necessary to rescue myself. (Beginning with carrying a small keg of scotch around my neck, not unlike a St. Bernard.) All I will say is that it is important to take that step. Selfishness has its virtues, but it won't sustain you and the longer it takes for us to realize that, the longer we prolong that next stage in our life.
And with that, I will take my leave. I have to go neglect some laundry and not pay some bills.
