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Will we ever grow up?

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13:04 / 22.04.04

It is sometimes said (frequently by women) that men never grow up. I think they might be right. But is it just men?

As a 23 year old, on my way through the park today, I couldn't resist throwing the can I was holding into the bin from a good 8-10 yards away. Fair enough you might say, if you're to lazy to walk across to the bin. But friends...the bin was on my route. Furthermore the pleasure I took from watching it drop in like a 3 pointer to win the NBA got me thinking.

Will I ever grow up? Are women right?

Does anyone else out there (over the age of 20) ever do childish things like this? Is it just men or do the girls do things like this too. C'mon everyone...it can't just be me...can it?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:15 / 22.04.04

I don't really like to generalise, so I can't really speak for us as a gender-

but I know I'm never gonna grow up. I'm 32. I read newspapers for a living. I spend a great deal of time at work pissing myself laughing about the fact that there's a journalist called "Roger Boyes". And making crass jokes about "briefs" and "jobs". And the name "Bugge Wesseltoft". And the fact that Baden-Powell's seminal (snigger!) work was called "Scouting for Boys".

this last part's in italics, cos I'm whispering... I have also been known to, when I'm alone, pretend I'm actually a Jedi. With lightsabre noises and everything.

13:30 / 22.04.04

Take up martial arts, Stoatie. Then you can jutify stompiing around screaming and being a bit macho in grown up words. S'great.

13:34 / 22.04.04

Grown ups are boring.

13:59 / 22.04.04

In supermarket car parks I still find myself riding along on the trolley. It is only with great restraint that I stop myself from going "Wheeeeeeeee" while doing so. I know it's childish, but I feel maturity is over-rated. I like to think it shows I have retained my child like joy with the world. Others I'm sure would argue that it just shows how childish I am.

14:15 / 22.04.04

Maturity's fine in moderation.... but one should never be expected to stop doing things based solely on their age (i.e. computer games, comics, jumping on walls, climbing trees, etc. etc.)

Tryphena Absent

14:38 / 22.04.04

Pah! In supermarket car parks, much better to do it in actual supermarkets.

Look here, being a grown up is not fun, supposedly you don't get to whizz around on trolleys or stick your tongue out at people but that's just not true because we have fun in exactly the kind of ways kids do and it's normal. Throwing a can in to a bin is normal and so is dancing down the street and doing the spinning thing where you hold your arms out and spin until your dizzy and it's okay to play chase games and eat ice creams(with flakes) and jump up and down when you don't get your way and tickle people. These are very grown up things to do and anyone who says they aren't needs therapy. This is my decree, refuse to follow it at your peril.

And also you should sing more.

14:39 / 22.04.04

The word fart still makes me giggle, if that answers your question. Growing up just means adding sexual innuendos to one's repertoire of dirty jokes.

15:03 / 22.04.04

Throwing cans in bins? Next time play on the swings.

15:06 / 22.04.04

i still do a lot of stuff like everything mentioned above. i worry, though, cos i'm getting older, that instead of looking like i'm rocking on in my youthful abandon, i'll just look crazy. so i actually do stuff like that less now.

15:33 / 22.04.04

this last part's in italics, cos I'm whispering... I have also been known to, when I'm alone, pretend I'm actually a Jedi. With lightsabre noises and everything.

Doesn't everyone do that? Hell, I don't even have to be alone.

15:56 / 22.04.04

"Act like a grown up" is just something that boring people say. Then again, anyone who's that bothered about mimicking a certain set of behavioural signifiers doesn't deserve to have any fun.

Having said that it does sometimes have a reasonable meaning - take responsibility for your own actions, don't fucking whine, don't be a selfish arsehole expecting to get your own way etc. Not that those things are uncommon in "adults".

The Prince of All Lies

18:33 / 22.04.04

I don't want to become a boring moron when I'm older, and I don't think I will...If you can't have fun being silly, you'll grow old and bitter...

Dances with Gophers

19:00 / 22.04.04

What's childish about anything mentioned above!?! Kids eat, drink, sleep, and breath are these things childish? IF so stop it right now! It's only childish cos some authoritarian Grey Faced so and so says so.
To them I would stand up in defiance and state nerny nerny ner ner!

20:13 / 22.04.04

I was discussing this with some girlfriends a few days ago. Our respective sig o's were tripping shrooms and playing video games, and we were talking about how they were all sitting around playing video games when they were 12, and here they are pushing 30 and still playing video games. And yelling a lot. Guys don't grow up, ever. My dad hasn't grown up. I usually think it's cute, and only occasionally very annoying.

Besides, I ride on grocery carts at the store too. And I like to grab onto posts and swing around them, and I adore soap bubbles, and I want a pony for my birthday.

I think there's a difference between being an adult and being a "grownup". Adult is an age thing. Grownup is an attitude. You can be an adult without being a grownup.

20:45 / 22.04.04

I think the perception of videogames as a childish activity is going to die out pretty soon, since as the kids of the 80's get older, they're not giving up videogames.

I find that I do almost the same things I did when I was five today. Back then, I was a big Star Wars fan, and watched a lot of movies, same today. I played NES, still do today. Seeing Kill Bill Volume 1 for the first time completely put me back in that childhood mindset of just being awed by something, not on an intellectual level, but on a, "That's so cool" level. I'm basically the same as at five, interest wise, only a lot more pretentious.

20:47 / 22.04.04

I also think the fact that there's a journalist called Roger Boyes is very funny. I just hope it's a pseudonym, otherwise school, let's face it... well it must have been tough.

21:13 / 22.04.04

I really, truly did once work with a girl called Claire Hunt.

The big excuse for not growing up is to have a child yourself.

I get to 'wheeeeee!' round supermarkets on a trolley and play 'The Simpson's Racers' sillily - purely to smash up lamp-posts, and I can happily kick cans (badly) towards bins and whinge about cleaning my teeth (oh, no, that's just my son, sorry,) all in the name of 'good mothering'. 'Good mothering' is ace because it basically means you can be stupid and not have to grow up.

I get to roll down hills and make badly iced cakes and be silly on the virtual computer game cars at Legoland, and I can eat sherbet dib-dabs on Fridays, and spend ages dithering over which pull-back dragon to buy and I can do it with total impunity, because I am a Mother. It's my job. I get paid £16.50 a week in child benefit to dick about! Obviously, I can't live on it, because it's not a wage but it's nice the government has even bothered to factor it in, don't you think?

£16.50 to have fun each week? Deal me in.

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

21:16 / 22.04.04

Slight threadrot (well, blatant, in fact) here, but the unfortunate name thing just reminded me of a guy who I work with, last name Cox.

Two years ago he had a son and named him Isaac. Think about it. This boy is going to hate his parents for that slight oversight. The amazing thing is nobody had pointed out the drastic nature of this name!

While many of you may think I'm shitting you, I can assure you I'm not.

21:38 / 22.04.04

That's not threadot. that just unbelievably, hilariously amusing

22:16 / 22.04.04

Not quite as good as that, but I was browsing the address book at work and there was someone called Dick Gigante. Also, there is a Theresa Green.

22:36 / 22.04.04

I think Isaac's folks should seriously discourage him from having anything to do with firearms, as he grows to a man. Every parent should, but in this case, purely out of self-preservation, I'm guessing for def.

This is terrible threadrot, but a friend of mine knows someone called Peter Ness. I mean ok, Roger Boyes might be something like Sixty, a child of a kinder, less prurient time, but Peter was born in the early Seventies... These days, I'm guessing, he spends a lot of his time at the local gym.

23:14 / 22.04.04

Oh dear. I don't get Peter Ness. Explain someone?

Oh. No I do get it. Ewww. Forget the explananation.

Fridge, I too know someone called Theresa Green. There can't be that many thick parents in the world, so perhaps it's the same person...

09:15 / 23.04.04

I myself have one of those why-didn't-his-parents-think-of-that names in that my forename's initial followed by my surname makes a slightly rude word. Not in the same league as Peter Ness (P.Ness - penis, Olulabelle) or Isaac Cox (suggest Ophelia if your colleague has a daughter, Cloned Christ) but I have had my share of nicknames.

Ibis, I think a lot of people don't grow out of finding farts funny. My father has a friend who is in his 60s who will tell you with a giggle that his proudest achievement in life was clearing the dancefloor at his golf club's annual dinner dance with a fart.

10:02 / 23.04.04

Ophelia C - Cash, that is truly inspired. I mean the difficult business of being Ophelia in the first place, and then there's this other thing - there's no way that kid would see out her 16th birthday.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:08 / 23.04.04

Strangely enough, though I am the most puerile guy in the world, I don't find farts funny. I have no idea why not- I think I'm missing something.

Every other poo/wee/bum/willy/ladybits joke I still find hilarious, and that's never changed. Farts, no. I need help.

My favourite word at the moment is "Chunnel". It's NOT rude, but it SO is.

12:53 / 23.04.04

When I was a receptionist this guy used to call in all the time... the 1st time he called I honestly didn't catch his name and said, "I'm sorry, who's calling?" He raised his voice in irritation, surely he'd had to repeat his name too many times in life - "It's BOB BUTTS!"

And then I had to transfer it to the president, "Sir, it's Bob Butts on the phone." Even the boss giggled.

But why not go by Robert? Really, it's his own fault, isn't it?

15:10 / 24.04.04

Olulabelle - I think you'll find her name is Teresa Wood

08:58 / 25.04.04

When I was at school and girls used to say 'you're so immature' I always thought that I was clever to say 'well if maturity means that you become a miserable cow, then count me out'.

Now, I spend most of my time sitting around with friends still talking about the most abstruse things in the most unserious nature. Love kicking cans, or anything (with a cheeky flourish with the back heel) in the streets (except cats or dogs, natch) love throwing things into bins at akward angles and from great distances, and still go 'ohhhh' if I miss, like drawing penisis on other peoples paper work when they are not looking, or making blu-tak into curled up dog turds and sticking it to peoples workareas'...

VonKobra,Scuttling&Slithering

09:25 / 25.04.04

When women say men never grow up it means they want you to buy them a Rocket Launcher.

You guys have no idea around the ladies, do you?

09:48 / 25.04.04

Being grown up is a bit like wearing a suit, I can do it and look damm fine while doing so, I just choose not to unless I have to.
Anyway why should kids have all the fun, I'm not going to stop dressing up and running round the woods with a fake sword killing orcs until I'm dead quite frankly

.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:09 / 25.04.04

Fucking landlubbers with their pesky landlubbers' categories!

Arr, me hearties, out there on the high seas, ye can do all the swashbuckling and derring-do ye wants, and it'll make ye a MAN, not a boy!

What be that, me boys? (Sorry, "men".)

Oh, it be Von Kobra's U-Boat! Ahoy there, mein Freund!

(See. Us pirates ain't just grown up, we's clever too. We can speak foreign, on account of all our trav'lin. Beats your book-larnin' any day.)...

...ummm...

is of course what I WOULD say, were I not quite so grown up.

...I'll get me parrot...

09:31 / 27.04.04

Alex - I mean the difficult business of being Ophelia in the first place, and then there's this other thing - there's no way that kid would see out her 16th birthday.

But if she did, that's when we might expect nominative determinism to kick in.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:01 / 27.04.04

God, the idea of a "Grown Up" man is such a turnoff. I picture GrownUpMan as being all beigeness and combover; probably votes Tory, won't shut up about his stupid car and how much stupid cash he's got, always sneering at the sort of stuff I like doing, criticizing my political wossnames in the name of some nebulous concept of maturity, "Oh, I used to think like you, but then I grew up, blah blah blah..," probably won't let his wife go to evening classes unless it's flower-arranging or some shit like that, 2.4 cowed dead eyed children he's railroading into IT careers regardless of their desire or talent, absurdly proud of his stupid bank job and his stupid leather chair, pushing past me on the tube with his stupid Gold Card rghhrghhRGHHH KILL KILL KILL! KILL WITH LIGHTSABRES!

11:06 / 27.04.04

No kill with sticks while making the lightsaber sound in your head

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