Growing Up Is Hard to Do

This past weekend I was faced with an unanswerable question from Theodore’s almost-4-year-old son, JP. Why, he asked me, are you an adult?

How do you respond to such a question? How do you tell the truth in a way that a preschooler will understand—and that actually feels true to you as well?

“I’m an adult,” I told him, “because I have a beard.”

He seemed to accept that just fine, and pretty soon he was throwing a piece of wood into some bushes. But JP’s query came back to me on Sunday when I read A.O. Scott’s piece in the Times about the “Generation X midlife crisis”:

The Gen X what? I wish I could inflect those paired pop-sociological clichés with the requisite irony, but my air-quote fingers are afflicted with incipient arthritis. The ridiculousness of the phrase is telling, though, since it registers the sense of absurdity, the innate nonseriousness, that has been this generation’s burden ever since the Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland christened us in his 1991 novel, “Generation X,” the title of which was inspired by the second-rate punk band that gave the world Billy Idol.

I see you rolling your eyes. That’s right, you: the one in the fake-vintage rock ’n’ roll T-shirt and thick-framed glasses reading this on an iPhone at the sidelines of your daughter’s soccer game. But you know exactly what I’m talking about, pal. (And by the way: stop trying to be a hip alterna-sports dad. Just cheer, for God’s sake.)

I’ll have you know, Tony, that my T-shirts are just plain old fake vintage—they have nothing to do with rock ‘n’ roll. But anyway, his piece is structured around three pieces of fiction I haven’t seen or read: the movies “Greenberg” and “Hot Tub Time Machine” and the novel “The Ask,” by Sam Lipsyte, each of whose central characters, all firmly Gen Xers, face the dilemma of how to grow up, having never considered that a particularly worthwhile thing.

What if you donned the binding garment of maturity only tentatively, and accessorized it with mockery, as if it were a hand-me-down from Grandpa or an ugly shirt plucked from a used-clothing rack? And what if, from the start, your youthful rebelliousness had been a secondhand entitlement, without a clear adversary?

In his piece, Scott is primarily playing diagnostician, breaking down the fictional treatment of the Gen X midlife crisis into his component parts. But he doesn’t try to explain why we (yeah, I have to include myself in his analysis) happen to be this way. Why do we wear fake-vintage rock-band T-shirts and expensive sneakers? Why don’t we grow up?

Now, we could probably fill many, many pop-journalism books with the answer, but this is a blog so I only have to present a sketchy, evidence-free theory. Which is:

It’s more profitable today to remain stuck in adolescence.

Think about the transformation of the American economy over the last thirty years or so. We went from a manufacturing economy—which encompassed union blue-collar jobs not to mention the affiliated white-collar management positions—to a service economy. And not just a service economy but an entertainment economy. If America exports anything these days, it’s American culture.

And if you want to be an exporter—to participate in an industry centered on independence, freedom, creativity (all commoditized and commercialized, of course)—it helps to remain stuck at the emotional age where those qualities are ripe and productive. Can you imagine the stentorian fathers of the 40s, 50s, and 60s thriving in today’s creative industries? It sounds sickening even to me, but knowing the history of 1980s hardcore bands (subspecialty: D.C. area), the My Little Pony back catalog, and all the secret Mario Bros. levels are arguably more valuable to your career than a mastery of Keynesian economics. After all, anyone can learn that on the Internet. To get a reference like “Knowing is half the battle,” you have to have lived it.

Okay, so watching G.I. Joe reruns ain’t the Greatest Generation, and it might not get you a job at Google. But it’ll help you get a gig writing movies like “Hot Tub Time Machine.” The film may not make much money, but your friends will laugh at it, and may even pay to see it. If they’re not too stoned.