NO you can't have fun it's not allowed

[jackfaire]

It was early and I was talking to a friend and we were talking about her recent break up with her ex who it turns out was very much a Mama's boy and a wet blanket. It got me to thinking about how some people our age, 30s, tend to forget they aren't dead yet.

I posted "hey if your 31 your a kid with a few adult responsibilities act like it. lighten up and have fun." at around 1 in the morning.

A friend of mine replied with "No. No, you're not. You're an adult. Have fun if you want, but you're an adult."

This is the philosophy I hate. It is the "Oh sure you can go to the bar on Friday night but you damn well better be wearing a Suit and Tie come Monday morning. You better take every little bit of life as seriously as possible and your only allowed to have fun between the hours of x - y"

This is the exact kind of guy that post was meant for the kind who take more things in his life serious than are.

[Andara Bledin]

If you're in your thirties, you're not a kid by any stretch of the imagination.

You can have the mentality of a child and you can be immature, but you're way past the "still a kid" phase of your life.

Honestly, what really irritates me is the idea that being an adult means you can't have fun. Why the hell is fun only allowed for kids and "kids"?

^-.-^

[siead_lietrathua]

i think as long as obligations and priorities are being met, then any other time/$$ is mine to do with as i wish.
the problem is, many people think if you hit an age mark, you have to give up certian things.
*eyes her pile of toys and dolls, and her hubbies WALL of boardgames, toys, and consoles*
nope.. not happening.

BUT i can understand the other side of it as well. you can't do what you want when you want as an adult. you can party it up weeknights if you want, but if you work a suit and tie, 9-5, mon-fri job, you better make sure you are coherant and able to perform in those hours. if you can't when going out on a wed night, be able to work thrs morn, then ya, keep it to the weekends.

[bex1218]

If you come in my room right now, you would think a 13 year old lived in it. Posters covering the walls (and other stuff that can hang on them) stuffed animals on the bed. Kind of a mess. No, a 21 year old lives in there. People tell me to grow up. No. Removing those things would not mean I have grown up. Mind your own business of what I have in my sanctuary. It does not mean I can't be mature when it is necessary.

I will dress appropriately for work and other occassions (or try to at least, with my family its hard). Actually, in my job I have freedoms that others do not, even within the same comapny (and sometimes the same district). Other times I just put on shorts and a t-shirt and go about my business. In my life, there has to be a balance.

[MrsEclipse]

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

-- CS Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing for Children (1952)

The day I read this comic:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/grownups.png

I decided what it means to me to be a grown-up: it means we're ready to positively contribute to the world in the way we're most suited. As long as we are not acting directly counter to that, what we do for recreation is nobody else's problem. You like to play video games? No problem. You're having a blast playing Mario's Early Years in that learning shapes game? Again, no problem. You're staying home all day mooching off everyone else so you can do nothing but play video games? Well, then, we have a problem.

[bainsidhe]

Interesting how the context of a comment changes based on what you know about a person. For example, I've never met the OP's friend and I interpreted their comment much differently.

I mean, I'm 35 and while I like being told I'm young (my coworkers are quite a bit older) or that I'm young at heart, I get irritated when told I'm a kid. In context, that usually means someone is saying that just because I'm younger than them, my opinion is worthless or that I'm ignorant about "how the world works".

I am an adult 100%. To me that means I take responsibility for myself and my actions as well as how those actions affect others. It also means I'm legal.

Now I'll go back to watching my cartoons (anime) .

[Ginger Tea]

You are not a child, but that doesn't stop you from being childish if you want to be.

If you wish to spend your cash on lego when your friends and or co workers spend theirs down the pub, well it is your cash.
When it comes to spending rent money on it, well ... although I do know people who spend rent money on other things they shouldn't too.

Last year I got my now 40 year old brother the latest revision of Lego Starwars Slave I at the Manchester branch of Toys R Us, I truthfully said it was a birthday present and may have even said he would be 39, none of this ficticious nephew crap.

Years ago I would never dream of setting foot in a toy store to buy stuff for myself, mind you Transformers had ceased Starwars was not quite out and Lego was a long ago memory.
It was just something I as a then 20 something, didn't feel OK with doing, having a mooch around a toy store where I was well out of the demographic age range.

Now though most 'toys' are sold as collectables to the adult market who were kids first time round, so as a late bloomer in the Lego Starwars field, I am quite happy shelling out for some kit or three and found the discontinued in the UK slave I I got my brother on sale and got the last one (that I know of it was dusty) for retail price not marked up like everything else does.

So I on occasion go to my local TRU to see what is new even though I could order online, it's just that I could if I wanted to, walk out with a box and have it built and photographed that night instead of adding it to my wish list and never getting round to ordering till perhaps too late (as the slave I and the Ultimate Falcon £1000 on ebay!).

[blas87]

Heck, the geeks I work with give me shit about my little shopping "problem". Yet, one of them has to depend on some of our more......gluttonish coworkers to give them food, because if he only has $50 to his name, it's going to the newest video game that comes out this week.

Two of them have been notorious for skipping work on Monday nights/Tuesday mornings, when video games are released and at stores.

I go to the mall (until tomorrow, it's only a mile away) maybe once every couple of weeks. I hardly ever buy anything full price, or even anything more than maybe $20. I don't always even buy stuff. For $50-$60 a brand new video game costs, I can get two pairs of jeans, three or four shirts, several pairs of underwear, a purse, nice makeup or haircare stuff, get my hair done, get my nails done......(not all of that at once, just seperated like that). That, and my gym membership isn't even near that much.

I guess it depends on what makes a person happy, but the hypocrisy just makes me angry. I don't make myself hungry or without something I need because of liking to shop and being vain about my appearance, and I don't skip work to go shopping or to work out.

[jackfaire]

My issue wasn't that he was contradicting "we are still kids" thing.

It was that he was proving my point that we need to lighten up as a peer group. I understand getting that job is important but many of my peers are treating every little thing as a life or death decision.

Hence my happy fun don't forget to remember what it was like being a kid when most of your life wasn't so serious and realize that most of your life still isn't so serious.

Yes take your job seriously, take keeping your kids safe seriously but have fun spending time with your kids. Lighten up about the shows you watch, realize that your still young and life is not this serious dire thing where every little thing is over thought.

His counter point was life is 90% serious and you can have a little fun.

My point is that work is no more serious than school was many of the responsibilities you have now are the ones you had when you were a kid and the only difference is how people treat them and their lives.

[firecat88]

I've gotten crap from various people, including my sister and my former Spanish 201 prof who I still do not like and refuse to speak to to this day because he was a complete ass, about stuff I like too.

Yes, I still watch cartoons (both Western and Japanese).

Yes, I do have a rather large collection of young adult fiction, including about 85-90% of Tamora Pierce's entire collection of works and an assortment of Dear America/My Name Is America/Royal Diaries books

Yes, I will always be a sucker for heroes-and-monsters fantasy stuff like Young Hercules (and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys to an extent, though not nearly as much).

And, yes, I am almost 26 years old. Do I find anything wrong with any of the previously stated points? Not at all. You don't have to like what I like, but snark on me for it and we're going to have a problem.

[Mishi]

Yes take your job seriously, take keeping your kids safe seriously but have fun spending time with your kids.

So true! Jazzy and I get weird looks for splashing in puddles and skipping down the footpath, hand in hand. Doesn't matter though because we're having fun.

[tropicsgoddess]

Adulthood doesn't have to be boring and full of drudge and giving up the fun stuff, IMO. I won't give up my video games that's for damn sure! Yeah granted you have to be responsible, pay bills and all that jazz, but you still can have fun as an adult.

[Amanita]

Some people probably think it's pathetic that a 32 year old like me likes to cosplay. Sometimes I bring out the Jedi robes, and lately I've been designing original characters based on skyscrapers. To them, they cannot comprehend anybody wearing a costume aside from a small child on halloween, or an adult who gets paid for it (Professional actor or mascot).

As an adult, I can put together amazing outfits that I never could as a child. I can dabble in prosthetic appliances, beautiful fabrics, electronics, and other things that elevate an outfit from "costume" to "wearable art". And I'm not ashamed to wear my handiwork in public either, I am not harming anyone or doing anything wrong, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Quite the opposite- my cosplay outfits are great labors of skill and love, and I am proud of them. Piss on anyone who wants to give me crap for it.

[Rageaholic]

I always saw those people as miserable, uptight douchebags who are bitter that people aren't as miserable and uptight as them.

The Joker said it best "Why So Serious?". Isn't it amazing how even the most psychotic characters can have good simple advice?