puce

You see, she was complaining about not being able to feel herself maturing and becoming more 'enlightened.' We all know that, with maturity, we somehow become more intelligent, right?

Well, I was thinking; maturity doesn't exist. It's a shadow concept that exists to allow one sector of the population to do something while denying the same to the other sector.

As I grow older, I see 'mature' people behaving in the same exact manner as they did as 'immature' kids. Petty fights and disputes, rowdy partying, perpetuating misunderstandings, avoidance of conflict all happen, but just on some psuedo-realistic level that is carefully disguised under the auspicious name of maturity.

This concept of maturity warps, depending upon the needs of the community that is defining and using it at any particular moment. Maturity is used to cast a bias; to imply if one is not mature, they are less 'civil,' or less intelligent.

The fact is, as we grow older, we aquire more knowledge. Some aquire more than others simply because they pay attention. I sometimes am forced to recognize that the majority of the population is pleased enough with themselves to make it through the day with bettering themselves by only learning what the odds on the Pats / Giants game was.

Now, just because you know a lot doesn't count for much, either. If you can't use that knowledge for much else than wowing your friends when Jeopardy is on, then you obviously haven't actually understood what you've learned.

And then you have these psuedo-intellectual yuppie-like status climbers who look down their nose at people because they don't bend their pinky finger while swigging down that frosty cold one. I can hear the words now: "How revolting!" My only consolation is that they think 'Fraiser' is one of them, stuck in a bad reality, when in fact he's poking fun at everything they think they are.

So where am I going with this?

I am sitting here with my child, who can't even talk yet, worried that one day, I'm going to repeat those infamous words used by my parents; "Grow up!" Out of some teen-rebellion gone out of control, I'm still fighting those words. I refuse.

I will not be that 'mature' little perfect square peg yuppie, get a job, get married, house with a white picket fence, 2.2 kids, dog, cat, SUV, Lite FM, Izod and Khaki wearing, Beaver Cleaver family rerun.

I like a little irresponsibility. I like to go out and get slappy drunk once in a while. I like to stay up late on a school night. And I like pulling up next to that IROC Z, with it's tinted windows and heavy bass pounding out the latest gansta wanna be crap, and two white kids in the latest ganster styles and watching their faces as I sit in my '89 Jeep Cherokee, windows down, surfboad on the rack, baby in the back laughing in his 'Under 40 Pounds' facing-backward childset at the dog slobbering over his face, as my 'Down by Law' tape drowns out their bassline, and my wife yells at me to turn it down, it gives her a headache.

So what does this have to do with maturity?

Maturity is used to define what the 'baseline' for acceptable behaviour is by whoever is doing the judging at that particular point. Nothing more. It's a psuedo-state-of-being created to keep people who are just stupid and don't know better from acting like fools and ruining the party, (which in my experience, would include the majority of the population), but is now used more to differentiate and isolate further the people we feel do not conform to what the rest of the main clique believes.

Maturity is a concept that people who continuously evaluate their existance, consume and interpret what they experience day in and day out, learn from it, and form their own concept of what reality is and isn't, don't need.

The fool at the party is only a fool if she doesn't know everyone is laughing at them. If she knows everyone is laughing at her, then she isn't the fool. The people laughing are.

That's maturity.