It seems that every time I open up Twitter, there is a new Thought Catalog post guiding twenty-somethings through some existential crisis. And of course, this advice is almost always laid out in some obscurely numbered list—“17 tips for twenty-somethings to land a dream job”, “23 Relatable quotes about being in your twenties”, “796 signs that you are a huge twenty-year-old dick”.
As one of society’s charity cases, I started to ponder why the hell we lend ourselves to so much step-by-step guidance. And these are the reasons I numerically came up with:
1. 90’s TV didn’t accurately prepare us for life. The reality is that the Cory and Topanga’s of the world break up then get back together then break up and hate each other passive aggressively. If you get your wife get knocked up with twins, chances are you’re not going to have a “Full House” to care for them. Moreover, both of those situations are absolute train wrecks that in real life, would hardly lend to soundboard laughter and FCC approved puns.
1.1 We have a severe lack of survival skills because most of us weren't selected to participate in Legends of the Hidden Temple.
2. Hagrid never showed up at our doorstep. It’s incredibly frustrating to know every spell that could make our lives a living dream. Yet, when we command the word “accio” (and, be honest – you've tried it at least once) there is only stillness where we await remote controls and condoms to veer towards our bodies. The reality is that we’re all just a bunch of muggles. Filthy muggles.
3. We've lost sight of neighborhood street games. It was a simpler time – not knowing how to tell time. Where the only thing we knew was that once the sun went down, we had to head in for the night or we’d get the living daylights spanked out of us, as was the norm before the No Child Left (with a sore) Behind Act. Maybe if we could all get back to cherishing the little things in life, like writing things on cement with firefly goo, our bigger problems would start to solve themselves?
4. AIM was a catalyst to a false sense of necessary openness. We are now the people who post poorly lit photos of our food, seemingly ambiguous quotes hinting at our personal lives, and sonogram pictures of our accidents for the world to see. Then we turn around and complain about how annoying all those things are, because we are hypocritical idiots.
5. Color changing spoons no longer exist. Or, at least none are being found at the bottom of Froot Loops boxes (to my knowledge). And while it truly has been an arduous process getting used to regular spoons, our bigger issue is that we grew up expecting every box of cereal to come with a free prize. We expected everything to be handed to us on a color-changing platter when the real world is full of aggressive fork-bearing jerks, who will stick it to our regular spoon-ed asses.
6. Society isn't ready for a new breed of young’ins who can’t afford to move out of our parent’s basements when we’re twenty-something. SORRY MOM! We've been left to convince a generation of technology illiterate humans that despite working several crappy part-time jobs, we’re a’ight. We’re just growing up differently – slower. But that’s ok! By the time we’re our parents age, our country will be so broke it will be illegal to procreate anyway. Thus leaving us with a substantial portion of our incomes to be spent on the necessities, like Anthropologie candles.
In short, we better get some fucking help now, because it’s going to be our responsibility to guide the current seedlings through their twenties. And lord only knows that a person who doesn't understand the words “Leggo My Eggo” has serious issues ahead of them.