Innocence Costs

Oh, the cyclical nature of demystification; it’s as though growing up is as much about realizing your own capacity for stupidity as it is about overcoming said stupidity. Losing innocence is as much about realizing that you have something to lose as it is about rubbing mutual pink parts. The smartest people I know are not those who know the greatest number of things about stuff, rather those who know how much they don’t know. More than puberty, your first beer or your first “real” job, it seems that growing up is about figuring out what growing up is.
In 2008 there were 350,000 children under the age of 18 serving time in jail in the United States, there were more than 720,000 teen pregnancies (80% of which were unwanted or unintended) and over 5,000 drivers under the age of 20 were killed in car accidents. These are definitley severe examples, but American youth is about making stupid booboos that scar over into the calluses of adulthood.
However, it is a common misconception that one traumatic event is a eureka moment of everlasting maturity. Humans are habitual dunces, and bad ideas have a tendency to work like Jenga blocks. Cutting corners and taking risks becomes a test of creativity, until inevitably all the little wood blocks collapse(at which point we vow never to take such “immature” risks again whilst simultaneously setting the pieces up for another round). In this way, growing up is about learning how to eat crow, humble pie and shit, while still showing up to play again tomorrow.
I live in Los Angeles where there are roughly 3.2 million parking tickets issued a year. The city collects $113 million annually due to parking citations alone. In any given year I am responsible for at least a few thousand of those dollars.
This is not because I am a terrible parker or because I accumulate, say, fifty $40 meter violations in 12 months. No, no, this is the handy work of letting a handful of tickets double, then triple then go to collections where they accumulate a collector’s fee for a few months. Every time this happens and I inevitably cowboy up and head to the downtown courthouse checkbook in hand. I stand in line behind an army of angry, slighted, suffering Angelinos (just like me). I then cut a check for a few months rent or a down payment on a car or a few semesters at community college; enough to level my savings to a pancaked flat line. Every time I vow, I honestly commit to myself, “No way dude, never again. You’re a grown up now, man. Grown ups don’t do this.”
As the tickets pile up again the same unexplainable ridicules behavior piles up right along side. This is not growing up; this is just stupid.
If I changed my behavior I wouldn’t be any more “grown up”…just less broke. Growing up, it seems, is learning that no amount of assumed responsibility can suddenly propel you into the realm of adulthood. Its about coming to terms with your bone headed tendencies and moving past the ones that you can while enjoying the ever quickening momentum of mortality. Growing up is about taking what you get and going with it, as simple as that may seem. It’s about facing the day clueless with a handful of fellow hopefuls and being brave enough to pretend you are not all terrified.
It’s about yelling at the gods from the top of the mountain, “Yeah, I may have to push this rock up this hill for eternity, but I’d rather have balls than be an angel!”
There are plenty of people who move past their pitfalls and remain imbecilic teenage-minded thirtysomethings. There are plenty adult minded folk who are still crippled by repeated stupid investments (sub-prime mortgages, bad college loans, car notes). Do these tremendously overbearing mistakes automatically grant them the title of adult?
More than 5,000 small businesses declared bankruptcy last month. On average 56% of American entrepreneurs don’t make it past the first three years of commerce. Bad decisions are what the American dream is all about. Finding happiness regardless is what growing up is all about.