Maybe I’m behind the times…

…but I just now discovered the word Rejuvenile, based on the book of the same name. “Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up.” Huh. I don’t mind the cupcake as such, but the cult of obsession around them is a little odd. But then, you could say that about just about anything on the Internet – and as somebody following a Scottish soccer team I will probably never see, even on television, I can’t really cast aspersion. Kickball…well, when we were playing softball in DC, we had this constant swarm of drink-addled kickballers trying to use fields we’d registered with the National Park Service to use on the appointed day, so I developed a healthy sense of disdain for them…now, apparently, FourSquare is the big thing in Silicon Valley (trust me not to notice until it shows up on the front page of the Chronicle)…

…hold up a minute.

It was bad enough when my generation was tarred as a bunch of slackers en route to skipping right over us so that the children of the baby-boomers could be painted as the Next Big Thing (that would be the generation of Britney, Paris and Lindsey, FYI), but now apparently we’re all entering our second childhood…and that’s a good thing? Put me down as a Harrumphing Codger if you must, but I’m not sure I see the appeal. I spent my whole life desperately waiting for my chronological age to catch up with my mental age (yes, I was one of those poor cursed SOBs who was “gifted”). I went through eight yards of hell to get to be an adult, and I am not particularly interested in going back.

And yet.

I suppose you could make a case that this is all about people wanting to shed their overweening sense of responsibility for a while, one gob of frosting at a time. Believe me when I say that I see the appeal. However, I guess my problem is that I still don’t live in the moment enough – that once the cupcake’s gone, you have to throw the wrapper out and get back to paying the bills, or diapering the kid, or working on tomorrow’s presentation. Not that I have a kid to diaper, but you get the idea. Ultimately, I don’t think I’m satisfied by the momentary escape – I need to either be allowed to magically get my 20s back and make a better go of it this time, or else seal it off and work on making sure that what happens now is all to the good. I guess I don’t have the patience to substitute distractions for solutions.

And yet.

(An aside: I am currently under obligation to produce at least one 500-word blurb a week for this blog, to discipline me into writing and taking on topics that would not normally spring to mind. I haven’t decided yet whether these should be explicitly labeled or not, and have done one each way. However, I assure you that the menace of flightless waterfowl and virtual sports-entertainment were not at the forefront of my mind desperately banging on the door to be set free…but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch out for those slick little SOBs parading around as Linux mascots. CONSTANT VIGILANCE, donkeys, and don’t you forget it.)