Old Soul

I wish age were a more accurate predictor of maturity level. This discrepancy makes things very confusing and disappointing.

I know of a thirty-something-year-old man with the maturity level of a fourteen-year-old high school student who spends most of his time engraving drawings of penises on his plastic desk in order to impress his friends. He is incapable of holding serious conversations. I’ve never heard him say anything meaningful in all of the (many) years I’ve known him.

I interact with people my age at school and work who spend their time discussing subject matter that has presumably satisfied them both intellectually and socially since they were in the early years of high school.

I never got along with any of the people my age up until very recently. I used to think my inability to make friends with people my own age was due to an unforeseen deficit on my part. This caused me a lot of grief all throughout high school. I didn’t fit in with my peers. This was certainly because there was something wrong with me. I didn’t realize this was false until recently. There wasn’t anything wrong with me at all—there was something wrong with my peers. They were idiots.

I’m finally beginning to get along with (some) of my peers. It’s very nice seeing them slowly (and some more slowly than others) grow into complete human beings. I’m excited for the time when truly meaningful conversations will be more plentiful than the banal ones. I’m only excited for this time, though, because I think it will eventually arrive—I hope this doesn’t prove to be an unreasonable expectation.

I’ve been called an “old soul” all throughout my life. I can now fully appreciate what that means. It’s just a matter of waiting for all the other souls around me to get old as well.

Simon

I was recently waiting in line at a coffee shop, completely transfixed by my phone with no regard for the real world around me, when I was approached by a man who looked like he could have been a roadie for Twisted Sister. He had a feral, raised-by-wolves sort of charm about him as he stood in front of me and pointed to himself and said, “Simon”.

Looking up from my phone and having absolutely no idea what was going on, I suddenly seemed to have lost any social skills I possessed and could think of nothing to say but, “No…” as if trying to politely refuse food from a friend’s parent, or an invitation to a child’s birthday party. A sweet, sincere, and in this case utterly confused “no”.

Now he was confused by my response and furrowed his hefty brow and repeated “…no?”

I decided to stick with it and once again said “no…” with a smile and a nod and went back to texting. He turned slowly and walked away, both of us entirely unsure of what just happened.

What can we learn from this?

A) Simon needed to step up his game. Simon: string a couple of words together and perhaps you will receive more than a monosyllabic response. In the wise words of the New Radicals, you only get what you give. Also cut your hair, are you channelling Ali MacGraw?

B) Let this be a warning that burying yourself in a blackberry can lead to social ineptitude and complete bewilderment when approached by a figure in the ‘real world’. Even Simon probably deserved a response like “Oh, I’m sorry but you scare me a little bit and I would prefer not to engage in conversation with you at this time”, rather than “no…” 

Then again, I’m not a woman of many words. Maybe Simon and I had more in common than I thought.