  Welcome to the rest of your life – 6/9/03 It’s nine o’clock on a Friday night. Here I am, firmly planted in front of the TV, watching the Brewers (the Brew Crew, for crissakes) put a hurtin’ on the Red Sox. I have a 12 pack of Harp in the fridge, and five are already taken care of. My plans for tonight – aside from writing this fine piece of opinionated literature for all of you fine lookin’ readers out there – involve watching the game, drinking some more beer, and probably falling asleep. That’s it. My esteemed colleague Dexter Otis Green believes that, along with others in our common circle of friends, I am succumbing to the perils of adulthood.
I no longer take off for uncharted waters without reason or rhyme; instead, I speak of work the next morning, or “obligations” that require my presence in the coming hours, days, weeks, or months. Adulthood is not a function of age or responsibility, I can hear him say – rather, adulthood is deciding that suddenly age and/or responsibilities actually matter. Part of me agrees with Mr. Green, but another part of me can’t deny that the pressures of a full-time job and the ensuing routine of days, weeks and months do weigh heavily on my poor brain. Which is why I’m here on the couch, wasting away my Friday night on barley water and Jerry Remy’s color commentary. Know why I’m not out causing trouble? Because I’m tired.
I’m 22 years old, and I’m run down. Friday night is the end of the work week, but it’s also one of only two nights out of seven where I’m allowed to sleep in as late as I want. And of course that’s assuming I don’t have any work due for Monday, or any projects that need my attention, or any other reason why I’d have to go in to work on the weekend. Why waste a perfectly good night staying out all hours when I only get this one rare chance to actually get some rest ? My one chance to switch off my mind and not have to answer to anyone; no bosses, no co-workers, no payroll department, no bill collectors, no nothing. So alas, it’s the couch and cable for me.
The worst part? In some dismal, dejected way, I enjoy this time off. So what would drive an otherwise well-adjusted American male in the prime of his life to spend his weekends like a middle-aged divorcee telemarketer? I blame my high school guidance counselors – and, in some small way, my college education. I see the same thing happening to all of my high school buddies who made it though their undergraduate years. Sure, we all have jobs now, our own places; we live with some measure of independence, however illusory.
But when the weekend comes, there we are, sitting at home in front of the tube with a six-pack and a dazed expression as we try to forget the pressures of the 9 to 5. And none of us are older that 24. At first, I thought it was just the transition from the wild hedonism of college into the drudgery of the cubicle that caused us all to become professional couch potatoes. But then I look at other friends from high school who gave higher education a big ol’ middle finger and got themselves a full-time job as soon as possible. Five years later they’re pulling down good salaries, driving fast cars with their trophy girlfriends to all-night raves and generally not giving a flying fuck about their jobs or their futures. To summarize, they’re living the life of a twentysomething – and I’m preparing for my mid-life crisis.
But therein lies the difference between the legions of college grads sleeping the weekend away and those who’ve always been part of the workforce. As I stated so eloquently before….THEY DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT THEIR JOBS OR THEIR FUTURES. Never did, in fact. They needed a job, so they got one. They didn’t like living at home, so they moved out. They want to stay out all night, they do.
If they forget to pay the rent, they’ll live somewhere else. And if they lose their job, well there’s thousands of other ways to make a living wage, so just find something else. Back in high school, when my buddies and I were young and impressionable concerning the ways of the world, we were force-fed the upper middle class dogma known as Bettering Yourself Through Education. College wasn’t a choice – it was expected. How else could we expect to get a Decent Job, or the Required Certification, or the Bachelor’s Degree that guaranteed us Upward Mobility? It was simple, really; four years gets you a magical piece of paper that guarantees you six figures at MegaSuperCorp working two hours a week and playing golf in Bermuda on the weekends.
Plus your parents pay for it all! Of course we were lining up out the doors to get into the College of Our Choice (or the Safety School, of course, if our SATs or our parents’ tax bracket weren’t up to snuff). So what has our four years of blood, sweat, tears and debauchery yielded? Sure, we got that magical piece of paper, that Bachelor’s Degree that says the world THIS MAN KNOWS MORE ABOUT CLASSICAL LITERATURE THAN THE AVERAGE PEON. But we never asked the Devil if we could read the fine print. Sure, we’re all specialized ourselves, but we never asked if the jobs would be there.
We never asked whether we would actually like the jobs anyway. And we never asked what it would mean to be locked into a single career choice at the ripe old age of 22. So here we are, a generation of accountants and computer programmers, elementary school teachers and civil engineers, with a ball and chain called our career wrapped tightly around our collective legs. It’s quite a debilitating feeling knowing that if our job sucks, well that’s all she wrote, you better suck it up cause you have $80,000 worth of classes saying this is what you know how to do. So, as my high school dropout buds jump from job to job and take whatever comes, here I am tied to my desk, doing the job that the Great American Workforce Factory has programmed me to do, forever and ever, Amen. I lift my sixth bottle of beer to you, my friends.
Here’s to the great promise of a bright future. May it someday actually come true for all of us. -Mr. Carson 
