Of all the reasons why I'd rather be my current age than in my forties, near the top of the list would be "lowered standards," in the sense that I lack the refinedness, pomposity, frailty, and/or resources to require much to be happy, or I haven't yet acquired the lack of tolerance that lets me be bothered by much (like energetic music or a dusty surface). At the moment, I don't mind sharing a 10x12 room for a living space. I consider Theo's essential beater status an asset to its character. I'm not embarrassed by a total incapacity to distinguish a good wine from Franzia. I can fall asleep on the floor and not be rewarded by six months of chiropractic therapy. At the end of last year I said that the most valuable lesson I got out of psychology class was the knowledge of HumanKind's basic ability to adapt to anything, and people my age take that asset and pump it with Red Bull. I think it's a way to replace words like "poverty," "insanity," and "health code violation" with "spontaneity," fun," and "Taco Bell."
Though I suppose middle-aged standards are just a different form of adaptation. One ride on a rush hour train to Chicago, seeing the businessmen who were shoved out of a GQ catalogue and onto the Office Space set, and you can't deny that some kind of 1984 adaptive conformity happened.
Do people really mature as they get older? The actions and things I consider acceptable or stupid have stayed more or less the same my entire life, and considering having completely unique traits is pretty much statistically impossible, I don't really see why anyone else should be any different. It makes more sense to me that there's a single accepted brand of maturity that if you're not born with, you'll just fake when you get older. I suppose the latter category are the ones more likely to fill the cubicle next door with styrofoam packing nuts.
3 days 'til my dad's birthday
20 days 'til Chrissy leaves
49 days 'til College: Round 2
...is this really all the material I have for a summer countdown?
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