While I was studying abroad, I met my father in Paris for three days. It was one of those "bonding trips." A vacation filled with sentimental catchphrases like, "I’m really glad we got to spend this time together" and "Here’s looking at you, kid" while we cracked open a bottle of champagne before the Germans raided the streets and Sam played "As Time Goes By." And at one point in this great trip we got to talking about my future. I explained to my father that I was really looking forward to my 21st birthday. I went a little further in explaining how this birthday would be the last birthday to look forward to, and after 21, birthdays are merely looked at as getting one year older, a little more rigid and a bit more osteoporosis-stricken. A tad morbid, a tad pessimistic, but we were in Paris, and I felt like everything I was supposed to say had to have a certain Sartre-esque drama and weight to it.
About two months later, on May 6, 21 years after I came out of my mother, I got an e-mail from my dad. It was heartfelt, insightful and pointed out how I was completely wrong in believing birthdays "ended" at 21. He went into detail, explaining how such celebrations take on new meanings as you reach new milestones in your life. Twenty-two doesn’t have to connote graduation and entering the "real world," and later birthdays don’t necessarily have to connote prostate infections and ED. Rather, it’s about sharing future occasions with your children, your wife and those you care about. He really had me going for quite a while, but as graduation nears, I’m starting to become skeptical.
This weekend, somewhere around the time my friend and I debated whether he should stuff the crotch area of his American Gladiators costume or not, I realized that this is the life. These are the petty — or in his case, miniscule — subjects we concern ourselves with in Madison. I use "we" very sparingly. I can’t generalize because I know there are many students who have the ambition and goodwill to raise awareness about current events — genocides, environmental issues, etc. — and devote their time to various other topics I hear about from my AOL sign-in page. I applaud you. You’ll have a lot of fun in heaven while I am hastily trying to convince some secretary in purgatory about how I can’t go to hell because the heat gives me hives.
But for you students who can relate to and appreciate a collegiate existence filled with minimal responsibilities and inconsequential decisions, you can probably relate to the fears that accompany that next birthday. At 21, I have deadlines: hand in the political science paper by the 15th. And as the deadline rolls around, I can do the paper, or e-mail the professor. That e-mail would explain how my fictitious stepfather broke his back opening a subzero refrigerator and how my mother really needs my help at home. Sympathy gained, extension granted, no harm done.
At 22, fresh in the workforce, you also have deadlines: Achieve your sales quota by the 15th, or move back to Jersey and live with mom and the ailing fictitious stepfather. At 42, although you get to share your birthday with that loving family, you also have to provide things for them like food and water (There’s got to be other necessities a father must provide, but they’re slipping my mind right now). Fifty-two: mid-life crisis. Sixty-two: please be benign. Seventy-two: early bird specials and Velcro sneakers. Eighty-two: talk out loud during movies and rant about paying seven dollars for a "Cola."
I’m not totally abandoning my father’s reassurances that life after college is far from dull and monotonous, but I know I’m justified in my tentativeness to adopt his thinking. For the last seven semesters, I haven’t had much responsibility, haven’t faced dire consequences and never really found myself in a situation that mimicked the professional world. I wake up at 10, go to class, eat a few hot pockets and wear bathing suits when I run out of underwear to avoid doing the laundry. As I turn 22, which will almost exactly coincide with graduation, I fear those inevitable responsibilities and that drastic change in lifestyle are going to be a bit overwhelming. If only I owned an orange jumpsuit and knew how to play the recorder, I could stay in this utopia forever.
Jeremy Elias ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in communications.
