No One Grows Up

“No one matures anymore. They stay jackasses all their lives.”
She’s Having A Baby

I came to a sweeping realization last night as I sat in the bleachers watching my son’s middle school basketball game. No one ever grows up really. The same clique-ish and sophomoric behavior that characterized us as high schoolers still manifests itself in us as adults. Or as Corey Flood so eloquently summarized in Say Anything, cautioning Lloyd Dobler to stay away from valedictorian Diane Court, “Brains stay with brains. The bomb could go off and their mutant genes would form the same cliques.”

Yeah, that’s true. I wish that it weren’t, but it is. I’ve noticed it recently in the parents of other kids on the team, who actually form their little sub-groups that one cannot penetrate. The parents of a group of boys on one of the traveling baseball teams have formed one and like to make a spectacle of themselves at ballgames and school functions. They’re the “popular kids” complete with inside jokes and stories carefully told loudly enough so that all within earshot know that they’re not part of the group. My wife seethes at them. I just think they’re funny and sad.

As you might guess, I was a bit of an outsider in high school. I didn’t particularly fit in with any one group. I wasn’t ostracized by any means, but I was never fully accepted into one particular clique or another. I was smart enough to be in classes with the so-called “brains,” but I didn’t eschew girls, sports, music, cars or uh, girls according to the stereotype. I was a pretty good athlete, but basically good enough to be the last guy cut from every team I went out for. So I wasn’t the complete jock. The stoner guys liked me because I helped them with their homework (Kevin Connelly would never have passed religion class if it weren’t for me) and I wouldn’t rat them out. But the strongest thing I’d touch was a warm beer huddled by the railroad tracks in Gale Moore Park, so they weren’t my crowd either. Even my own smaller circle of friends didn’t know how to take me sometimes.

But I was OK with all that. It kind of gave me the freedom to flit from one group to another, and see a little bit what they were all about. I was more accepting of some of their less attractive attributes because I also saw their better sides too. But I was filled with the hope that one day, we’d be beyond the petty group mentality. Yeah, I was wrong about that one.

And the sophomoric behavior? Well, let me tell you, especially those of you without kids, that the stereotypes you hear about parents at their kids’ sporting events is 100 percent true and accurate. They’re rude. They’re obnoxious. And most disturbing to a sports guy like me, they’re clueless, but loud. How can you feel comfortable shouting at a referee or coach, when you have no idea what you’re talking about?

Last night I’m sitting not too far from a grandfather who is screaming, SCREAMING at our coach about substitutions. This is MIDDLE school mind you. And this guy is going off on the coach, who’s really a 24 year old English teacher. But what really kills me, is John Wooden here doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. At one point he’s carrying on as to why one of our kids is standing still on offense. And I want to yell back at him, easy there Bobby Knight, that’s called a pick and it’s about as basic basketball as you can get. And the “clickers” are nodding in assent with him, in between offering applause and encouragement only for their kids. Because acknowledging the accomplishments of another kid might mean you’d actually have occasion to speak to someone outside your group. Expansion of horizons is not something easily accomplished in the suburbs.

So that’s what got me to here. No one really grows up. The same fears and experiences you had in childhood, shape you as an adult. Fear of whatever, be it loneliness or abandonment or just not fitting forms your color palette as an adult, just like it did when you were 9 or 12 or 15 years old. So you seek that pack mentality, that safety in numbers feeling that allows you to hide those insecurities in the context of a group. And maybe that’s not so bad, but it’s no less discouraging.

“Demented and sad…but social.” Jeez, even The Breakfast Club contained life’s truths? No wonder we don’t grow up.