Mile Markers
I am walking up 6th avenue toward the bus stop where I wait to be chauffeured back to Staten Island on one of the MTA’s finest vehicles. For some reason the sidewalk is choked with people. The sidewalk on 6th is normally crowded but today for some reason things are worse. I’m confused by this for a moment until I see the first one: some kid in a gown.
Oh crap, it’s graduation season.
Every year in mid-to-late May several graduations take place around the Rock Center-Times Square area including a few at Radio City Music Hall. Radio City Music Hall happens to be across the street from where I wait for the bus home. Graduations equal slow-moving tourists/bridge and tunnelers times a thousand. You see my dilemma, don’t you? And you see why thoughts like these pop into my head when I run across, say, the NYU graduation: “Look at that, there’s literally a thousand or more schmucks who just paid in the high six figures or maybe even seven to have their kids smoke dope in the Village for four years and now they’re schlepping into Midtown and spending fifty bucks on parking to be bored for five hours at a celebration of their collective fleecing. Man, I gotta open one of those colleges. It’s a license to print money.”
Isn’t that a terrible thing to think? It sounds like I’m against higher education or something. I’m not in principle, though I think it is completely unnecessary for most jobs. Mine included. Doctors? Lawyers? Teachers? Absolutely. Your average white collar office-working paper-pusher? Waste of time. Fun though, and transformative in many positive ways. At least it was for me. And that’s the other thing I think about when I see Our Collective Future taking their 85th picture of the RCMH marquee with their tricked-out smart phones. How much has changed for those kids in the last four years? A ton if their college experience was anything like mine. Although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t like mine because in all likelihood not a lot of them did what I did which was drop out of one school in freshman year, start in another on a completely different educational/career path and wind up taking five years to graduate because of a) the aforementioned change and b) working a lot of hours while going to school and c) spending a lot of time at the campus radio station. That being said, I’m sure most of those adorable enrobed ragamuffins blocking the sidewalk because they can’t figure out that the street numbers go up if you walk north and go down if you walk south experienced a lot of whiplash-inducing change of their own.
And maybe that’s what bugs me a little. I think that part of getting older is that life becomes more or less the same for extended periods of time. In some ways that’s preferable – if you and your loved ones and your friends are healthy and financially solvent it’s good to keep it that way. However what you miss is that buzz of anticipation for what’s next – how will your sophomore year be better than your freshman year? What will it be like when you’re a senior? Won’t it be great when you’re old enough to get into bars? We pass fewer and fewer of those signposts when we get older. I think that that’s one reason some people have kids: they realize they’ve passed all the big, happy mile markers on life’s highway so they want to vicariously experience them all over again through their offspring.
To me, however, the signposts are what you make them. I enjoy each and every occasion that symbolizes the passing of time. Unlike many others, I was very happy on my 40th birthday. As a matter of fact, I’m pleased every year on my birthday. It means I made it. I lived another year. Not everyone gets to live 40 years or 41 years or, the good Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise before August 42 years. I’m also generally in good spirits on New Year’s Eve which I consider to be everyone’s collective birthday party. All of us still standing get to celebrate the passing of another year, good riddance to the bad and file away the good. Sometimes I think the calendar should be adjusted to have New Year’s land smack at the end of April since spring is such a celebratory, anticipatory time but no, might as well keep them months apart There’s not much else to celebrate in winter after Christmas comes and goes; better give that season all the help it can get.
Of course, that season also puts countless addled tourists in my way as they stroll to a seasonal celebration at Radio City Music Hall. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.
Oh crap, it’s graduation season.
Every year in mid-to-late May several graduations take place around the Rock Center-Times Square area including a few at Radio City Music Hall. Radio City Music Hall happens to be across the street from where I wait for the bus home. Graduations equal slow-moving tourists/bridge and tunnelers times a thousand. You see my dilemma, don’t you? And you see why thoughts like these pop into my head when I run across, say, the NYU graduation: “Look at that, there’s literally a thousand or more schmucks who just paid in the high six figures or maybe even seven to have their kids smoke dope in the Village for four years and now they’re schlepping into Midtown and spending fifty bucks on parking to be bored for five hours at a celebration of their collective fleecing. Man, I gotta open one of those colleges. It’s a license to print money.”
Isn’t that a terrible thing to think? It sounds like I’m against higher education or something. I’m not in principle, though I think it is completely unnecessary for most jobs. Mine included. Doctors? Lawyers? Teachers? Absolutely. Your average white collar office-working paper-pusher? Waste of time. Fun though, and transformative in many positive ways. At least it was for me. And that’s the other thing I think about when I see Our Collective Future taking their 85th picture of the RCMH marquee with their tricked-out smart phones. How much has changed for those kids in the last four years? A ton if their college experience was anything like mine. Although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t like mine because in all likelihood not a lot of them did what I did which was drop out of one school in freshman year, start in another on a completely different educational/career path and wind up taking five years to graduate because of a) the aforementioned change and b) working a lot of hours while going to school and c) spending a lot of time at the campus radio station. That being said, I’m sure most of those adorable enrobed ragamuffins blocking the sidewalk because they can’t figure out that the street numbers go up if you walk north and go down if you walk south experienced a lot of whiplash-inducing change of their own.
And maybe that’s what bugs me a little. I think that part of getting older is that life becomes more or less the same for extended periods of time. In some ways that’s preferable – if you and your loved ones and your friends are healthy and financially solvent it’s good to keep it that way. However what you miss is that buzz of anticipation for what’s next – how will your sophomore year be better than your freshman year? What will it be like when you’re a senior? Won’t it be great when you’re old enough to get into bars? We pass fewer and fewer of those signposts when we get older. I think that that’s one reason some people have kids: they realize they’ve passed all the big, happy mile markers on life’s highway so they want to vicariously experience them all over again through their offspring.
To me, however, the signposts are what you make them. I enjoy each and every occasion that symbolizes the passing of time. Unlike many others, I was very happy on my 40th birthday. As a matter of fact, I’m pleased every year on my birthday. It means I made it. I lived another year. Not everyone gets to live 40 years or 41 years or, the good Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise before August 42 years. I’m also generally in good spirits on New Year’s Eve which I consider to be everyone’s collective birthday party. All of us still standing get to celebrate the passing of another year, good riddance to the bad and file away the good. Sometimes I think the calendar should be adjusted to have New Year’s land smack at the end of April since spring is such a celebratory, anticipatory time but no, might as well keep them months apart There’s not much else to celebrate in winter after Christmas comes and goes; better give that season all the help it can get.
Of course, that season also puts countless addled tourists in my way as they stroll to a seasonal celebration at Radio City Music Hall. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.
Comments
Your observations reminded me of a time, roughly 20 years ago, when an alumni/curler dragged me to his alma mater to witness a kegger at his old frat house. Apprehension abounded as I viewed the sea of unwashed undergrad humanity before me. Then someone handed me a beer; and the rest I don't remember.
Perhaps if all of those ragamuffins had a cup of beer in each hand your journey home would have been more enjoyable? Or at the very least, less memorable.
I have, sad to say drifted apart from a few friends over the years who, once they had kids became incapable of talking about anything else. Whatever common interests we shared were out the window. Never talked about 'em anymore. Ah well, I'm sure the various shifting interests that have caught my eye over the year have driven some people off too. It's part of the great circle of life. Or something.
I am fortunate to have many friends that didn't have the obsession with kids consume them once they bred and I am blessed to still have them as friends. I even enjoy hanging out with their kids because those kids are usually more interesting and more well behaved than the kids of the obsessed. But you knew that anyway, right?
I suppose I should consider myself lucky as I too know plenty of those obnoxious sports parents given my hobby de jour; but I never actually befriended one.
And my kids enjoy hanging out with you too. At least that's what they tell me.