Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 20:00:19 -0400
From: Kafka Dreams 
To: void
Subject: nuts and bolts and mechanics of madness


WARNING: Long, self-indulgent introspective twaddle ahead.  Please
         pick up your safety instructions placard and follow along
         with the steward.  Rhetorical questions within.  Be sure to
         take all necessary precautions.  Should you need assistance,
         this sure as hell won't guide you.

--

I took a vacation day on Friday, April 16th.  Not something I do often
because people at work tend to panic when they can't find me (even
though I've set up an on-call rotation so that they can always find
someone).

Balanced on the cusp of importance and insignificance, I am afraid to
turn my pager off both because of what might happen while I'm gone and
because it makes me nervous to think that no one needs me.  But I
digress (and while I am the soul of digression, it is in a
non-productive direction).

I took the day off because I really needed a break and I also wanted
to run a bunch of errands that had to get done during business-hours
(my first passport photos, bank deposits, dropping things off at the
cleaners, etc). 

Some things I've never done before.  But one in particular made a big
impression.

I went through a carwash.

It was REALLY COOL!  Neon lights and zaps of water and suds and the
dancing swabber curtains.  Except for the creepy guy at the end who
"polished" the tires (yes, I know that stuff just melts the rubber but
I didn't realize he was doing it) it was pretty neat.

And I got CARWASH ("workin' at the CARWASH, yeah!") stuck in my head
for several hours.  Funk is never a bad thing.

Then I went to the hardware store ("oooh OOOH oooh yeah") and wandered
around.  I needed wood putty to repair a damaged panel on a wardrobe
that I bought unfinished ("work, and work, and work") and wanted to
repair before sanding and staining.

And I wanted a bigger flowerpot for the Sweet Basil plant I'd bought
the night before at Bread & Circus (so, of course, I needed potting
soil and a drainage plate as well).

I also picked up a small lamp for my office (I hate flourescent
lights) and a new bucket (bring me... a bucket) and putty knives for
the wood putty (woo!).

Then I went to STAH MAHKET and bought foodstuffs and snagged another
hand towel for the kitchen (I think my housemates eat them) and these
cool new packages of Arm&Hammer baking soda that have cheesecloth over
openings in the sides of the box (VENTS) so that "air can flow
THROUGH" or some such rot, though they truly do make the fridge smell
less terrifying.

Then I got home and unpacked everything and starting cleaning up the
kitchen and BY GOD DID I EVER FEEL DOMESTIC!  HEARTH AND HOME DO TRULY
PUMP THROUGH MY VEINS!

And I started thinking about The Trappings Of Adulthood and I came to
A Realization.

When I entered the carwash, I didn't align my wheel with the
mechanism.  I had no idea.  I'd never done this before.  There was no
sign instructing me to do it.  The guy leaned out the window had me
back up and re-try and I apologized, saying I'd never gone through a
carwash and he excused me with carwash-guy-zen simplicity ("No problem
- how COULD you know?") and showed me my wash options for the day.  I
picked the PLATINUM treatment because I WANTED IT ALL!

And it was fun!  Going to the hardware store is fun!  Running around
the backyard with a big pair of hedge-clippers is pretty cool too
("The door flew open, in he ran, the great, long, red-legged
scissorman").  Having my passport photos taken and getting a receipt
from the cleaner wasn't as much fun, but they were interesting
nonetheless.

These were all situations where I hadn't the faintest idea what the
hell I was doing or was going to do, but when I'm in a new one, I play
around a bit, and I ask questions, and I observe other people, and I
read directions, and eventually I get it right or I ruin it and I buy
another whatever-the-hell-it-is and I'm more careful the second time.

Most of these things are simple.  Plus, there are lots of people who
have never done these things before and there are a bazillion systems
in place to help them along and minimize wasted time on both sides of
the transaction.  It's interesting to watch and learn (though the
occasional metaphysical stubbed toe of making an embarrassing mistake
does ache).

And all of this helped the gradual Realization to finally take root
for me.  Things obvious - perhaps; things unconscious, to be certain;
but things vocalized?  Not until now.

The idea I had is that as we try on the Trappings Of Adulthood, we are
children in over-large shoes dragging too-long raincoats behind us,
tugging and tying and stuffing until the bits fit, not really noticing
when we've grown into the pieces.

The realization that we don't need the extra belt notch that Dad had
to use his leather hole-punch to make for us is mundane and passes
with all things simple and daily, unnoticed until we run out of belt
notches and wonder "Damn!  When did THAT happen?"  Like going home
after a long absence and noticing that things which were once huge are
now small.

It took me a while to finish college, to buy a NEW car that I wanted
to keep relatively clean, to accumulate clothes that needed to go to
the cleaners and to wear them often enough to require that they be
cleaned.  I'm making plans to visit another country for the first
time.  I'm thinking (JUST thinking) about what it would take for me to
buy a house.  I'm drooling over nice couches and attractive dining
room sets.  I crave a sewing machine (and nostalgia wants a giant old
pickle jar full of buttons of every sort).

All things that grown-ups did and shopped for and always dragged us
along, unwilling and bored.

And I am coming to believe that the more Trappings Of Adulthood we
adorn ourselves with, the more we approach (bit by bit, via Zeno's
Paradox) the actual state of Being An Adult.  (Or perhaps the state of
having convinced ourselves of Being An Adult.)

(I would argue that the act of defining "Being An Adult" breaks down
before any explanation discrediting Zeno's Paradox can be completed.)

And so I begin to think about Being An Adult, as I have done before
and undoubtedly will again.  And whenever I consider this topic, three
things always leap to mind:

1. Some show about World War II (or about a president from that era, I
   forget which) once lamented the loss of Adults, defined by this
   narrator as men in greatcoats and burberry hats, men with A Sense
   Of Purpose and the women who bore, raised, and supported them.  (A
   few women with A Sense Of Purpose were included, but only by
   specific reference.)  And I realize that this idea matched part of
   my own - unvoiced, unrealized - idea of A Real Grown-up.  (Of
   course, another significant part of this idea is the cowboy turned
   sherriff, so take it as you will.)

2. Various people have trashed the term "grown-up", seeing in its
   grammar the stopping of growth, as though one were all finished,
   and resent the idea.  I find myself agreeing and prefering the term
   "adult", although that word's reputation now evokes images
   unseemly, even lascivious.

3. I look at the children of the 1940's and 50's who raised their own
   children in the 1960's and 70's while still young themselves.  And
   I think about the rippling, grasping, searching need for
   spirituality and guidance and self-help and love that's built up
   over the past three decades and I wonder what caused it?  What
   results will come of it?  What results have already come of it?

>From there, the thoughts fragment and bounce off each other and
generate new combinations of questions.  Is the loss of the Adult With
A Sense Of Purpose redeemed by less oppression and limitation of what
the individual can do?  

And always comes the dangerous territoriy of definitions.  What will
Adulthood come to mean, or - as in Arthur C. Clarke's _Childhood's
End_ - will the concept become moot?  Am I an Adult if I declare
myself one?  Or if the goverment declares me one?  Or does it come
more from a sense of responsibility, not only for one's actions, but
for the lives of the people around one?  Or is Adulthood like
Coolness, where it only comes to you if you truly don't care, too busy
living your life?  If you stop resenting responsibility and let it
become part of you?  Am I an adult if I go to war?  Or only if the war
affects me with a deeper sense of purpose?

The questions are endless.  They rattle around, noisy and
argumentative, unwilling to quiet down like good children and take a
rest.  The Trappings Of Adulthood are heavy today, and they keep
slipping off as I list too far to the left, exhausted.  I stayed up
late working on a proposal in order to get it in this morning and now
I am tired.  Not well-planned or smart or responsible.

And through the Trappings you might see my ragged army fatigue pants,
my mismatched socks, my DEFCON 6.0 "I MISS CRIME" T-shirt under the
ubiquitous Company Blue Denim shirt, unbuttoned and flapping as I
stalk the halls, a grumpy apparition, unkempt and uncouth, not the
least bit grown-up looking at all.

Kelly J. Cooper
19 April 1999