Becoming an adultescent

VICTORIA — (CUP) I have never been in a rush to grow up.

Maybe it started when I failed kindergarten. I was a December baby, and as the other children towered above me, I mostly kept to myself.

Playing in the corner with my DUPLO, I refused to speak unless I had a couple moist building blocks lodged in my cheeks — I seemed to enjoy the moist clacking noise it made when I attempted to speak.

Maybe it really started when I decided to stretch my Grade 12 over two years, giving myself an extra stint before graduation.

By the time I’d reached the lofty summit of secondary school, I was so comfortable and secure in my surroundings that I saw no need to rush into the real world. Instead, I enrolled in some extra university prerequisites and took advantage of another year with the family car, my rent-free existence and a full refrigerator.

Even once I’d received my diploma, it was months before I considered getting a job.
(My initial debut in the workforce was as a full-serve attendant at my local Shell station.)
I waited a year before I headed off to post-secondary, and even then I spent four years dropping in and out of college. I was afforded the luxury of questioning what direction I wanted to take with my life, and why.

What was the big hurry, anyway?

One day, while I was visiting home, my dad threw a newspaper at me and told me to read the main article. It was about a new classification of people, an entire generation of 20-somethings who seemed hesitant to embrace the lifestyles of their parents. A new name had been coined for this group: adultescents.

The definition of an adultescent, according to Dictionary.com, is simple: a middle-aged person who wants to be associated with youth culture and whose choices in clothing, activities and life reflect this — also known as a kidult.

“Thirty is the new 20,” the article said.

Though it had never occurred to me before, I instantly recognized my place in this group. Here was an entire subspecies of humanity devoted to taking things slowly. These people weren’t interested in starting careers or families. Rather, they were too caught up with fancy technological toys and the consumption of popular culture.

In a 2004 article in the New York Times, John Tierney described an adultescent as “too busy playing Halo 2 on his Xbox or watching SpongeBob at his parents’ house to think about growing up.”

There has not been a sociological shift like this since the invention of the teenager — back in the days of James Dean and Rebel Without a Cause. Before this era, it seems you were either considered a “child” or a “grown-up.” No one had considered the awkward in-between time of adolescence. Once the term “teenager” was coined, the world was never the same.

Now, adultescents are changing the way we see our society. We’ve questioned our parents’ path, watched the dissolution of their marriages and the soul-sucking downward spiral of the Monday to Friday, nine-to-five existence. We’re ready to ask questions like, “isn’t there more to life than this?” and “why should I grow up?”

Maybe I want to spend a year abroad. Maybe I want to explore my options before spending the rest of my life with one person. Maybe I don’t want to be a wage slave for the rest of my life, and would rather live in a basement suite than be tied to mortgage payments.

Sure, I have friends who are married. I have friends making huge salaries, working awesome jobs. A couple have even squeezed out babies, and are enjoying their lives as parents. Meanwhile, here I am, single, on the verge of my 24th birthday, neck-deep in student debt with only half of my undergraduate degree completed.

But do I really envy everybody else? No.

I have my whole life ahead of me. If I want to, I can still move to strange places, do crazy things, experiment with drugs or spend a decade in university — I can try different jobs and date whoever I feel like, even if it’s a flighty lesbian wanderer who disappears into the Middle East whenever she feels like it.

Some people call it Peter Pan syndrome. Some people say we’re all slackers and degenerates, taking advantage of the freedom our forebears afforded us.

I say adultescents are the ones who are fully embracing life, and forging a lifestyle that will be the way of the future.