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I wish
That
I knew what I know now
When I was younger
– The Faces, “Ooh la la”
Bum
Bum
Bah-bah-bum!
[then lots of whistling]
– Bob Sinclair, “Love Generation”
Those are two songs I’ve been listening on repeat this afternoon. They have nothing to do with each other, really. And for the purposes of this column, only the first song is important. I probably shouldn’t even include the “Love Generation” lyrics. They’re just confusing the issue. It’s been drizzling all day. That’s also not important.
My friend Huge was visiting from New York a couple weekends ago and we were walking around Boston and Huge remarked that we should start listening to old people more.
“Why?” I asked.
Basically his theory was that they’d been through a lifetime of experiences so maybe that made them qualified to dispense knowledge.
I was skeptical. Because the problem with older people is that they always seem painfully out-of-touch with young issues, like whether or not to get your back hair lasered off. Or maybe I’ve always just been painfully unreceptive to quality advice or criticism. Like yesterday I was driving a friend’s car and she was in the passenger seat and suddenly she said, “Adam, watch out!”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you’re almost scraping the car next to us!”
“No, I’m not.”
Obviously I told her that I wasn’t almost scraping the car next to us before I actually looked to my right because when I looked to my right I realized that I actually was about to swap paint, Ricky Bobby-style, with the SUV in the next lane.
I pulled our car to the left, closer to the double yellow line, where we would be safer.
“Well, it was their fault,” I said.
But then I realized that I had a history of driving too far to the right, and that I should probably start admitting that I wasn’t the world’s best driver.
(I have a friend named Goat, by the way, who once claimed to be “the best highway driver around.” First of all, that’s bullshit. But second of all, it’s kind of indisputable. It’s something that can be neither proven nor disproven, like God, or The Big Bang, or my theory that somebody could make a million dollars by selling oversized ketchup packets because the ones they make now only squirt out enough ketchup for, like, three French fries, so who wouldn’t want an oversized packet if given the option?)
(And actually, my veering-to-the-right problem could be much, much worse. When Huge and I were sixteen, I rode in his Dad’s car while Huge practiced driving. He only had his permit at that point, and we were both hungover from a night of experimenting with really cheap gin. Huge drove with one wheel on the road, and one wheel well on the right side of the white line, in the gravel. The entire way home his dad kept saying “Greg, get back in the road,” and Greg kept saying, “Sorry, dad,” and I kept contemplating rolling down the window to vomit.)
When I was driving an RV around the country for three months, I twice banged our passenger’s side mirror into another car. The first occasion was in Providence, early in our trip, when I drove by a parked plumber’s van and our mirror slammed against his mirror. My friend Ben was in the passenger seat and he said, “I think you just hit that van.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “The mirror just exploded for no reason.”
Obviously my explanation didn’t make any sense, but it seemed important at the time to not admit that I had steered the RV into a parked car.
Then on our last day of the trip, driving by Manhattan on a narrow bridge, I hit a truck in the lane next to us. There was a loud bang, but I blamed it on shifting luggage in the shower that we used for storage.
The point of all this is that I’m finally learning to accept constructive criticism – criticism like, “Hey, you’re driving with half the car in the next lane” – and it’s too bad I didn’t acquire this quality earlier, so that I could have been more open to advice from older people. Now, of course, it’s too late, because I know just about everything there is to now about life, the after-life, love, personal finance, winning, losing, masturbating, making friends, fitness, and the internet.
Which is why I wish I could invent a time machine, go back to my younger self, and steer him in the right direction from time to time. This isn’t exactly a novel fantasy. I know. My friend Sunger always talks about how he wishes he could visit High School Sunger, whisper in his ear, and then watch as High School Sunger morphed into the greatest ladies’ man the school had ever seen. I’m not sure how much high school Sunger would really benefit from post-college Sunger’s tutelage, but the important thing is that we all, at some point, wouldn’t mind having Marty McFly’s DeLorean.
I wouldn’t even use my DeLorean for anything too exotic though. Just practical stuff. Like when I was a little kid, I was a horrendous morning person. My parents would wake me up, and I would pretend to get out of bed, but I would fall back asleep, and they would have to wake me up again. Then I would go downstairs, lie in front of the heater, and fall back asleep. When I finally made it to school, I would be bitchy all morning, usually because I had a headache and/or couldn’t find my Trapper Keeper.
Now I don’t have an issue with waking up in the morning. But it’s not because I’m older or tougher. It’s because I drink coffee. I’ve come to realize that I was addicted all along. I just didn’t know it. So I’d like to go back to my seven-year-old self, give him a cup of coffee and a kick in the ass, and say, “Start your day, Champ.” Sure, maybe coffee stunt’s your growth, stains your teeth, and gives you bad breath, but it makes you happy, and that’s what’s important.
But I’d probably be too stubborn to listen to myself. That’s the problem. So even though Huge thinks we should listen to older people, I probably won’t. Because I’m young, and you can’t spell young without and stupid.
When Bruce Wayne was a child, he fell into a well, got attacked by bats, and broke his arm. His dad asked him why we fall and Bruce didn’t know. His dad told him, “So we learn to pick ourselves up.” And now Bruce Wayne is Batman.
So I guess growing up wouldn’t be growing up if we knew then what we know now, and if we weren’t constantly falling. The point is to fall less and less, until you’re hardly falling at all. But you’ll always fall. Even Batman gets scissor-kicked by the Joker from time to time.
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