We often ask children ‘What do you want to be when you’re older’. Which is odd, as it’s an incredibly boring and pointless question. Usually the response we are looking for is a job, which is a lot to ask of a kid given the only jobs they are aware of is being a firefighter, policeman, pilot and whatever the 4th dog in Paw Patrol does.
Asking children what they want to be only really ends badly. If you’re a progressive type you’ll find the typically gendered responses sad. If they answer ‘footballer’ you’ll have to swallow your tongue, lest you get into the harsh realities of the slim chances of success, sacrifices required, and relativity short careers. Almost no answer will actually reveal anything insightful at all. The great irony lies in the true answer to the question. The actual answer of ‘what do you want to be when you’re older’ is ‘younger’.
This is the great irony of age. When you are young, you want to be older, then when you’re older, you want to be younger. Before you’re 5 you want to go to school - especially if you have older siblings. When you are muddling through primary school1, you want to go to high school2, where you have agency and choice over your subjects and time (or the illusion of it at least). High school conversations are often filled with yearning for university, extensive research into decisions over courses, cities and the rest of it. At university you’re broke so you want money, but then you start out in a job and you’re someones bitch and so you long to be not someones bitch and instead make someone else your bitch. The American Dream.
I’m not sure when the switch point for not wanting to be older anymore is, 29, 39 , 49 are all contenders though. Something about encroaching on that big milestone really freaks us out. Sometimes age hits us square in the face and we must confront it. ‘Confront it’ is a loose term for feeling mildly depressed, curled up in a ball in bed, nursing a hangover. Turns out being able to sink pints all night, get up and do it all over again is, in fact, a young mans game. So too, is leaving bed without hearing a small orchestra of clicks, cracks and god knows what else from various regions of the anatomy. The costs of ageing aren’t just psychical. Time too, seems to disappear all too quickly. By the time you’ve watched little Timmy’s under 12s team get beat 7-0 by 6-foot-tall 12 year olds with more skill and facial hair than you, there’s hardly time for much of the fabled ‘weekend relaxation’. The life of a thirty-something dad.
That’s a weird phrase innit. Nobody is ‘thirty-something’, their 32 or 36 or 30-whatever-their-actual-age-is. There's never a point where you are not one age or another. You are 34, then you have a birthday and you’re 35. Thats how time works. We all agree on this. This weird turn of phrase where you kid-of allude to how old you are - but don’t reveal it. Is this meant as some weird tease? Like giving you a yellow tile on Wordle. Never ask a women her age, but if she says she’s twenty-something, she’s 29.
Each age has pros and cons. When you’re young you have time but no money, so we waste the former in desperate search for the latter. What we find is that all the money in the world is pointless if you’re to die the next day. It’s unfortunate that time and money seem to exist on opposite ends of the life see-saw. You need the most money when you’re young and able to travel, take risks and figure yourself out. When you’re a half-metallic old mess at 84, and someone else is wiping your arse twice a week, the money’s no good to you. Mind you i’m not sure giving young people all the money would be the best move either, I think Ethereum tried that and all we got were million JPEGs of monkeys.
Primary School is when you are 5-12, i’m not sure what they call it in America probably McMiddle School or something
*sigh*, this used to be called ‘academy’ but the americanisms have won over and now high school is the more common name here in the UK.