So a former coworker of mine sent me a newspaper article from his town where I used to work, outlining the criminal acts of someone we both knew.  She had been arrested for stealing some $500 cash and a wallet and who knows what else.  Her mother’s church had sprung for her bail, and she was released to that church’s halfway house.. which, since that day, she has gone missing from.  Her mother, understandably, is worried sick and frustrated, because not only does she now owe for skipped bail, but her child is wandering the streets with a severe drug addiction.

My purpose of this post?  This person is 32 years old.

I’ve often moaned over my hatred for the musical “Rent”.  You can love me or hate me over that one; I don’t care.  To be quite honest, the music is gorgeous.  It’s the ideology I can’t get behind.  I can’t stomach grown adults bitching about having to pay the rent.  About fighting THE MAN.  About how life is so downtrodden that they can’t follow their dreams in playing the guitar all day. 

Um, that’s not a downtrodden life.  That’s what we like to call ADULTHOOD.

And I think the Rent Generation is an epidemic.  Grown, capable adults living at home for no reason.  Not successfully holding jobs.  Bouncing from career to career.  Deciding at this point to be a teacher; getting tired of kids and deciding to sell make-up.  Getting fired from both.  I don’t understand it.

Where did this sense of entitlement come from?  I would be, quite frankly, MORTIFIED to be dependent on anyone for anything.  When months are tight and we barely squeeze by, I cut back as much as I know how to.  We eat canned tuna, for pete’s sake.  We take out that can of white northern beans from umpteen years ago and figure out how to make that a meal.  But we do it.

I suppose I need to dismount my soapbox, because it’s awfully easy for me to get on it and be self-righteous on this topic, and that’s not what I want people to hear.  And, admittedly, I don’t know that I have any ideas for changing the current climate of “adulthood” now.  I remember seeing a newsstory on some evening national news almost ten years ago about how kids are moving back in with their parents after college.  And barely flipping burgers with their degrees.  They won’t grow up, the newscaster said.

The Peter Pan Generation.  How unfortunate.