6.1 Reasons Twentysomethings Need Advice About Being Twentysomethings

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.

Social Experiment of Sorts

Foreword

The bathroom is a vulnerable, emotional, and disgusting room.  And that’s before you even throw the word “public” in front of it.  Yes, believe it or not, there are people who would rather crap their pants than breathe in the stench of a public restroom for a few brief moments. When you think about it, the psychological processes that go down in a public restroom are far more complex than the mundane, somatic human act of expelling waste from the body.

When you pick apart every miniscule behavior and decision that happens throughout this journey – from the moment someone decides to utilize the loo all the way through to the exit strategy – any average human suddenly becomes ten kinds of crazy.

What you are about to read is a documentation of the time when I, Eileen Elizabeth Matthews, went against all my initial instincts in a public bathroom and embraced the uncomfortable yet valiant act of breaking a social norm.

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The scene opens at Kingston Mines, a decrepit Chicago blues bar, outside the ladies room.

There are two over-dressed yet under-clothed women at the end of the line.  I proceeded to lengthen the line and attempt momentary companionship: “Kingston Mines…More like Kingston LINES, eh?”

Bitches weren’t amused. And despite my lack of interest in befriending anyone who welcomes leopard print into his or her life, I decided to try a different approach.

“Oh my god, I looove your heels! Where did you get them?!”

They didn’t hear me. I now appeared to be talking out loud to myself at a bar. In light of my rejection from the Cheetah Girls, I decided to go full-throttle with this mission. I glanced at the lengthy line of women and assessed the potential for a bitch fest. I removed myself from the line and bee-lined it through the door, hoping the other women would be too drunk to notice my quest.

Passive aggressive stares ensued along with several choice words.

I wanted to lie and say something like “oh my friend is in there; she’s sick; she needs me” to justify my defiance of social structure, but that would have made my actions more acceptable. My mission was of pure provocation and audacity.

Instead, I bumped myself up to the head of the line with an “ain’t no thang” attitude and proceeded to file into the first available stall. Mind you, the stall I shamelessly entered was the middle stall.  Now, I usually go for the first stall because I have this belief that it’s the least used.  It doesn’t catch the eye, and it sure as hell can’t fit a family of 5 incontinent children in it. So, if the germ armies weren’t already assembled at this point, they were definitely suiting up.

By the time I forced myself to make contact with the toilet seat, the battle had begun. Upon relief, I glanced to my right and saw that the toilet paper had rolled all the way down to the alcohol-steeped floor.  I was left with two options: claim environmental consciousness and embrace the paperless pee or succumb to the fear of communicable diseases via the liquor soaked TP.

I chose the latter.

I flushed using my hand, as most people would assume a toilet is meant to be flushed. However, as someone who is a frequent foot-flusher, this act felt very filthy.

In a last ditch effort to be as extreme in this task as possible, with confident conviction I flung the stall door open (pant zipper down) and waltzed out of there without so much as glancing at a sink.

I could feel the germs festering in every crevice of my body, along with the copious judgments from the ladies’ room lookers.  Mission accomplished.