08.13.10 - 8:40 am

when i look at the other parents during my sons soccer practice, i dont feel like i will ever look like them. they appear like the grownups towering around me when i was a child. theyre larger. stockier. their faces structurally like those of all the other adults i see. none of my friends have these features, that i am aware of. we look our age, sure but not like adults. most of us anyways. numerically, i dont feel im that much younger than these other people. 28 vs 36. when i look at myself, i still feel like im younger than perhaps i really am. i cant imagine myself ever reaching that physical adulthood i seem to see everywhere else. maybe it finally starts in the mid thirties. maybe in my forties my frail figure will change into that of a frail looking adult. and its because of this i cant tell if i feel inferior to these other soccer parents or at a slight advantage. inferior because my younger appearance and place next to them at a soccer practice puts me in a category of being naive, low income, irresponsible sexually and without a noteworthy career. an advantage because of that youth, perhaps i am capable of doing more than they are. i dont have the mortgage, the credit cards, the marriage, 40 hour work weeks, the three kids in middle school....

after writing that, perhaps all of this is just me not feeling like im where im supposed to be socially. a shame. a sense of embarrassment. im 28. i probably should be married. second kid walking around somewhere. a few thousand already in my 401k. every monday writing how much i hate mondays on my facebook update before dreading going to work. mowing my lawn on the weekends and already at the point where making out with my wife is too excessive. that is me admiring those parents, structurally superior to me.

but i have the child, i have the soccer practice, the school supplies, the medical insurance, the custody battle, the job, the morning coffee and late night tv shows with a few beers. i should still be haphazardly spending all the money i meagerly earn on traveling with friends, camping in other states, meeting and experiencing new people equally less responsible. i should have less debt, less to worry about and less things to tie me down. that is me admiring that kid with the kid, socially inferior to me.

being between these two roles, having just enough freedom to be irresponsible and just enough responsibility to be an socially mature adult, perhaps that is the admirable place to be at 28. perhaps im exactly where i should be and nothing more or less would make me even happier. perhaps there is no happier, only foolish fleeting follies of wanton excess. oh, insecurity, how tightly you grip.

thats probably it.