Spending some time on the Isthmus before things start to get witch-titty cold has helped to remind me why the hell humans habitate here in the first place. But lakes and drunks aside, I think my favorite part about escaping to Madison in the fall is the demographics.
Not only is everyone here white (JK! JK!), but everyone is young. I know Madison has its fair share of people who have gotten old, but I think you'd agree that this city harbors a disproportional amount of old people who never grew up. The university continually pumps youth into the heart of this city, and although there is considerable blood loss with every round of graduation, Madison always seems to remain something of a Never-Never Land. Its Lost Boys are found driving its cabs across town; its pirates cruise State, up and down.
As I mature, this town may become a little too tight in the trousers, but for now it's a perfect fit. Here I can basically limit my contact with grown folks to some lifers at my work, some out-there professors in class and some hey-she's-trying text messages from my mom. Everybody else is either too young in the loins or too young in the head to qualify. And that's just fine with me for the time being, because right now it's a real pain in the ass to talk to anyone above the age of 40.
Now, to be fair, the youth-challenged"" among us do have some redeeming qualities about them. Some are still pretty sharp for being so dated, and others can be quite pleasant, even though they have nothing to look forward to except getting even older. But that doesn't change the fact that it gets old pretty quick talking to old people when I am this young. And that's because they only know, like, three questions they can ask people my age, and their favorite one is the most vague and preposterous question of all time.
""So, David, whaddarya gonna do after you graduate?""
I don't know, what are you going to do after I graduate? I wish they'd ask me what I did before I graduated; at least then I wouldn't have to make all of it up. I always have to be just as vague and generic as fortune cookies when I predict my own future. ""Oh, I'm not sure yet,"" I'll stammer. ""I might take a few years off, you know, wait for the job market to come around ... maybe go to grad school ... network and stuff ... subsist ..."" Things like that. Why do they keep reminding me that I have to do something? All my life, all I had to do was the next thing. Then all of a sudden I have to find a way to pay my own health insurance. And it doesn't help that while growing up everyone tells you that ""you can be anything you want to be."" Oh, great suggestion, thanks for that much-needed direction in my life. When you tell your mom as a kid that you want to be a paleontologist when you grow up, she should tell you right away that no, that won't ever happen. That way, by a process of elimination you can settle on something practical before college makes you entirely unfit for the work force.
I suppose I shouldn't complain too much about the limitless possibilities my status as a young, educated, white male in America offers. That's not my aim here, though. I'm just saying I'm grateful to escape the Sheila So-and-sos and Mr. Neighborguys back home by fleeing to the youth asylum on the Isthmus here where I can smoke the peace pipe with Peter Pan and feel I'm doing alright as long as I'm not spending too much time in Peace Park. Because it makes it a whole lot easier to spend my free time tackling such trying tasks as throwing bags through a hole or flipping cups over when I don't have old people reminding me that,
shit, I gotta do something with myself.
According to his majors, David is going to be a historian and an economist at the same time when he grows up. What are you going to be? Oh, you'll never make any money doing THAT. E-mail him at dhottinger@wisc.edu for some guidance.
