I wish I could stare age down right in the eyes and shout, “You’re mine, Hook!” Fine, maybe I asked my mom to read Peter Pan to me too many times growing up, but the youthful hero had a point.
***
Two summers ago, I had one of the best nights of college I can recall. My buddy Seamus and I were invited to our friend’s 21st birthday party. And—full disclosure—we were the James Michael Tylers of the cast of Friends. We knew it and our friend knew it. We were the outside crew. But, knowing where we stood, we agreed it could be fun, so why not go?
As we arrived, we said our hellos only to realize our buffers weren’t even there. It was just the Lisa Kudrows and Matt LeBlancs. Yikes!
Intimidated by this whole thing, we made our way to the corner to come up with a Hail Mary plan. And just as we finally figured out how we would go up to Jennifer Aniston and the rest of the main characters, a group of three random dudes walked in.
The rest of the night was history. These three guys happened to be the boyfriend of the birthday girl’s older sister and his two friends. One of them was married. So, my buddy and I decided to run with what we saw as a comedy show and just make fun of these guys all night.
In conversations, they’d brag about something like their softball league, and we cracked ourselves up with snarky remarks like, “Your vision’s so bad already that you can’t hit a baseball anymore?”
It was a blast, and later in the night the conversation ended with the ultimate jab: “So what’s it like having a 401(k)?” They didn’t see the irony in our comments—these three fossils thought we were being serious. So, they answered us with the most sincerity they had shown all night, seemingly thankful we’d finally taken an interest in them.
“Great actually. 6 percent. Why do you ask?”
Well, we asked because “401(k)” just seemed like the most elderly buzzword we could think of. However, in the one and a half years since meeting our geriatric friends, we’ve learned that this is what actual conversation sort of becomes. Yup, unironically, both my buddy and I have talked about 401(k)s along with a bunch of other boring jargon that would put anyone to sleep. Yikes!
***
In simplistic terms, college is a four-year transition phase. It takes a bunch of teens, isolates them in dorms for four years, and by the end, “Big College” wants us to come out with a three-piece suit, a mortgage, and a job.
Maybe it’s just part of growing up, but I do feel that at times college can really suck the life out of us. We have all these hopes and aspirations when we come in, and by the time we come out, we see how hard it’s going to be to achieve them. We compare ourselves to the student who sits next to us in finance with the head start because her dad works at Morgan Stanley, or the fashionista walking across Stokes Lawn with clothes that make him look so much more mature than our Captain America shirt. Because of all this, we train ourselves to “fix” these issues by compromising our inner child. As they say, comparison is the thief of joy.
One thing they don’t tell you about college is that unless you have significantly younger siblings, you kind of forget there are these things called children who dress up in colorful attire and run around all day trying to have fun because a minute to them feels like a week to you.
What makes this so fascinating is that kids actually don’t care about what other people think. They don’t care if they win or lose an intramural mug because all that matters are the butterflies that said hi to them in left field. They don’t have to drink an excessive amount of alcohol to convince themselves they don’t look like the dweeb walking into the pub in a Superman costume. It doesn’t even have to be Halloween for them to dress up in the first place!
We could learn a lot from children, and I think being isolated with a bunch of college non-children and learning how to climb the corporate or social ladders makes us forget this.
Part of growing up is inevitable. It’s probably pretty healthy that my buddy and I are asking our parents how to open up a retirement account instead of asking them to hang our scribbles on the fridge. But the other part—the part that doesn’t care how others perceive us—needs to stay for as long as it can.
Because that one night a couple of summers ago, Seamus and I didn’t care what those old dudes thought of us. That’s what made the conversation with them so much fun. We could say whatever came to our minds knowing we’d probably never see them again. And I think the three guys knew it too. They would chime back asking us if we missed our bedtimes yet and other jovial roasts.
Comparison is the thief of joy. And, at times, social norms are the thief of fun. Who cares what people think? They’re probably just jealous they can’t have as much fun as you.
