RRCBlog

I’ll be forty-two before the year is out. I recently saw an optometrist about a new prescription for glasses. The eight-year-old pair I’d been wearing had become woefully inadequate. He slung the goggles on me, ran me through the “Better? Worse?” drill and wrote me a new, stronger prescription. He also told me I could benefit from bifocals. “But what if I don’t want bifocals? Can I get away with not having them?” I asked.

“You can get away with it, but I guarantee you’ll be back in a year asking for bifocals.” he replied.

I’m not one to bitch about getting old, really. Sure, I’m falling apart physically, but I know that’s all part of the circle of life. I don’t whine much about losing my hair. I’m not shocked when I discover what will certainly be age-spots on my face. I don’t complain about wrinkles–mainly because I don’t have many. When people express (or feign, more likely) disbelief at my age, I am fond of telling them that my plan for staying wrinkle-free is to gain twenty pounds every year. Using this method, I get fatter, sure, but my skin stays stretched. I tell them by the time I die in ten years, I’ll be almost perfectly spherical, but my skin will be luminous.

I work on the campus of a tiny liberal arts college. Nothing makes me more aware of my mortality than college students. Truth be told, I can’t stand college students as a group. I am quite fond of several of them individually, but as a group they annoy the shit out of me with their cel phones and thick hair and white teeth and vegan shoes. They’re all just so–young. Bastards.

We have a cadre of interns and associates. Each new school year, I am expected to speak to these associates (students) about my job. How I loathe it. My presentations are like an anti-career day–a speech on how not to live your life.

“How many of you read the Web site?” I ask them. I designed, built and maintain the Web site. Fewer than five hands are raised. “OK. That’s OK. How many of you have ever listened to one of the podcasts?” Podcasts that take hours to record, produce, edit and mix. No one raises their hand. “Alright. Not a problem. Do any of you actually read the magazine on a regular basis?” This question is met with uncomfortable giggling and less than half of the hands in the room go up. “Well, let’s try this: How many of you have ever heard of the magazine for which you are an associate?” Everyone laughs and raises their hand. “OK. Now we’ve got a base line from which to build.” I say, secretly defeated.

None of these kids want to do layout and design for print. They certainly don’t want to do any sort of Web design. These kids want to move to New York and go into the business of publishing. And they’ll do it, too. My favorite intern from two years ago is now living in New York City and is a reporter for Bloomberg News. I’ve called large publishing houses and gotten former interns on the phone. And good for them, I say. They are all truly good and bright kids. A few are a cut above–inquisitive, insightful and clearly head and shoulders above their peers in intelligence. These are not your typical state college date-rapists and rapees.

There they sit, with their whole lives ahead of them, bored out of their skulls as some fat fuck makes lame jokes and tries to describe to them a job none of them want.

But what can I tell them? I can’t tell anyone anything. I’d like to think I’ve been able to make a difference in people’s lives but the truth is, I haven’t. I’d say young people don’t listen to me, but that would mean that people my age listen to me and that’s simply not true. I’ve got friends my own age to whom I offer advice. They don’t listen. And people younger than I? Forget it. Perfect example: We’ve got a kid on the forums who recently graduated from some tiny Jesus college in Tennessee. He posted a thread saying he had a little extra money and added a poll in which the forum members could vote on how he should spend it. I don’t remember the exact poll choices, but they were something like

1. Buy an XBOX360
2. Buy an iPod
3. Pay down some of my debt
4. Go on a hot-air balloon ride

By an overwhelming margin, the forum voted that the kid should use the money to pay down the debt. He bought an iPod.

And I would have done the same thing (assuming they had iPods when I was his age, which they did not.) I didn’t listen to anyone when I was his age. In fact, I was so determined to avoid advice, I surrounded myself with people from whom I knew I would never get advice contrary to my own beliefs. They’re called “enablers” these days.

I’m beginning to wonder if anyone listens to anything anyone tells them. No one wants to do the hard thing, the tough thing, even if that thing is what’s best in the long run.

Then again, maybe I just give shitty advice.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 1:18 pm and is filed under OG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.