Feeling as I do a strong sense of duty to my tiny cluster of readers, I strive diligently to concoct interesting takes on interesting subjects each month. However, sometimes I find it difficult, and when this is the case you get something like last month’s entry. For those of you who bothered to read it (a masterpiece of literary criticism), I beg your forgiveness. For those of you who didn’t bother, I simultaneously applaud your good sense and wish rickets upon your offspring. It does seem unthinkable that, given the variety of controversial news stories plastered on newspapers and television screens throughout the country, I should fail to find just one subject on which to ruminate (especially having ignored the scandalous plaster-caked television screen crisis!). The answer/excuse is simple. I prefer not to deal with current affairs. After all, in a year’s time, will anyone harbour even the tiniest desire to re-read a piece on how I disagree with Sarah Palin’s opinions on the NHS? Will anyone give a flying dog’s bollocks about tedious animosities within the Labour party, the sixty-or-so claims of parentage to Michael Jackson’s poor children or the hilarity of the achievements of South African athletes being overshadowed by the bear-shouldered shadow of their questionable gender? Probably not. So I endeavour to write on subjects which affect us all. Thus my entries on nostalgia, exercise, romance and the roles of reader and writer in creating meaning within a literary text (it pervades your every action, you know). This month I write about getting older and becoming that little bit more grown up...or not...
At nineteen I am still able to remember very clearly the emphasis which was placed on “maturity” during my childhood and early teens. The careers of school teachers seemed, to me at least, to be based primarily upon their ability to nullify that part of a child’s brain that finds flatulence and sex education amusing. In hindsight this is even more terrible a shame that it was then. The number of children within whom animosity for authority is kindled by the prudish preening of teachers on a holy crusade of enforced personal development and accelerated maturation must surely be a tragically lofty figure. That forcing a person to do something for their own good more often than not causes them to act in a deliberately contradictory manner is not only restricted to the classroom, but successive generations seem perpetually unable to retain this knowledge. Thus we are encouraged, from womb to decompositional gas, to find animals sexing one another up distasteful, and conversely, to find deadlines, diligence and decency stimulating and refreshing. It’s disgusting.
A friend of mine recently made comments to the effect of disapproving of student drinking culture. Not in its entirety but certainly in its manic obsession with drinking as much as possible in as little time as possible with as much primal chanting as possible. He made the entirely valid point that many people actually think less of you should you prove unable to meet whatever lunatic challenge has been tossed sloppily your way. I think many of us have been in a situation where, as a result of dangerously out-of-focus eyesight, a perilously full stomach or a spew-addled grip on a menacingly eclectic cocktail of poisons, we have failed to live up to the solid, fleshy, smelly wall of peer pressure looming before us and have been forced to endure the jeers and less than flattering criticisms of our fellow revellers. This is the height of immaturity, of course, as my friend pointed out (having been similarly peer pressured into ingesting a foreboding liquid medley of Budweiser and paracetamol). But is this really all that terrible? Sure, making someone feel uncomfortable at a party is pretty unpleasant, but peer-pressure is part of being young. It’s also part of being slightly older, being middle-aged, being elderly and probably of being downright old. Should you think twice before shot-gunning a beer on the basis that what you are about to do is juvenile and medically-inadvisable? Should you buggery. Should you think twice before doing the same because you just don’t want to, or physicaly can’t? If you like, I won’t judge you. But prepare for other to do just that.
Some ten years in the future my time as a student will be behind me; I will be approaching thirty and will probably have a fairly shitty but fairly secure job teaching delinquents about Arthur Miller in some God-forsaken urban comprehensive. Spent will be my opportunities to pass out in a puddle of my own vomit without eliciting the most vehement disapproval from other adults. Right now it’s quite amusing, if very disgusting. But these things can happen and no permanent stain on my good name will result. Not so in ten years time... Although, teaching in aforementioned comprehensive, I am likely to be promoted to head of department as a result. My point is that immaturity is wrung out of us far too early and we are encouraged to embrace the world as the cold, hate-filled and judgemental place it sometimes is. We are scolded for immaturity in the classroom and feature on page four of the local newspaper for immaturity in adulthood.
I think comedians have a similar problem. They sometimes make jokes that are, if not immature in a childish fashion, immature in that they are not “respectable” jokes. Ricky Gervais, Jimmy Carr, Frankie Boyle and a whole host of contemporary comedians make jokes about rape, the Holocaust, paedophilia and an entire restricted section worth of tasteless subjects. Yet these people don’t actually find these topics inherently funny. Who would? They just have to trust that the audience has the intelligence, the maturity, to appreciate what they are doing. So why then should children, teenagers, students, even adults and pensioners, be reprimanded for tastelessness, provided that it is not malicious? That, essentially, is what immaturity boils down to: taste and the lack thereof. A man of nearly twenty chugging a mixture of Tennants, Sauvignon Blanc, Sailor Jerry’s and Bailey’s Irish Cream is tasteless (figuratively speaking). It is not respectable. You would not do it in front of your mother (unless your name is Andrew Cooper). But it isn’t something to be discouraged. Certainly not. Likewise, a joke about faecal matter is not appropriate for some circumstances, but it should be restricted as such. “Timmy, that sort of joke is inappropriate for the classroom”. NOT “Timmy, that sort of joke is inappropriate”, or God forbid, the lamentably immortal “Timmy, grow up!”
Children, don’t be fooled into thinking that cutting back on dirty jokes constitutes “growing up”. If that is society’s definition then never grow up. Just remember to hide your true self in certain company. After all, growing up should be enjoyable, not stifling.
Jamie
P.S. I am moving back to Edinburgh very soon. Hopefully this will help the flow of ideas for discussion. It has been a slow two or three months, as the last entry will attest. Peace out honkies!
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