Progressive Dematurization

I'm sitting at the coffee shop working on the housing crisis book. I go to the coffee shop because I get sick of being couped up in my house and need a change of scenery. I also go to the coffee shop because the people here are more or less middle aged and quiet. And while the occasional mom will come in with her toddler (which have this uncanny proneness to come up to me and want to talk to me despite my well-known Anti-Child Policy, they're like cats) I am left in relative peace.

Until now, for a group of as far as I can tell, high school girls have entered the coffee shop and are now talking as if they're all from Fresno Valley in California, when in fact we're in Minnesota.

"Like, OH MY GAWD!"

"Did he say that!??"

"That's, like, so weird!"

And thus the writing comes to a screeching halt and I hear nonsensical blather about Jimmy, and Bobby, and Steve and is she going out with him, LIKE OMG, you're kidding!

And every sentence is spoken with the tone of a question;

"So I got in my caaaar?"

"And I was going to call Tashaaaa?"

"She was was like, I don't have time for you????"

Then there is the occasional screaming as a text from some boy or another obviously has come in. I wish they'd just pass notes.

Anyway the reason I'm bringing this up and taking a hiatus from my writing is that it reminded me of an interesting observation I had when I was younger.

When teaching college economics at the local community college, the majority of the students were between 19-23. I was the ripe old age of 28 and with just that 5 years difference I remember listening to all their complaints and watch them behave and realized, "Holy crap, they're children! When I was 19-23, I thought women were so much more mature and I would have done anything to get them. But now that I see them and I'm older, I realize no wonder i was having so many problems when I was younger! They're all insane!"

And the same criticism can be laid square on the men too, but I wasn't interested in men, I was interested in girls. regardless, men of the same age in my class starting every sentence with "dude."

"Dude, she was like totally f#cking hot!"

"Dude! Sweet, I'm like so going to get hammered!"

"Dude, so like when supply kindof, you know, equals demand, that will give you uhhh, equilibrium. Rock on."

And then I realized I must have really sucked with the women in my youth because this was my competition and I still couldn't beat them. perhaps I should have gotten a hat and put it on backwards and said, "Dude!"

Regardless, now I sit here and listen to these kids and wonder how at the age of 16 or 17 I could have ever thought I was the one with the problem. These kids are insane today. They're literally, well, kids.

What scares me though is if when I'm 45 I'm going to look back at 33 year old women and then say, "what the heck was I thinking? They have a My Space page? And they watch American Idol? And Lost? "

Any 45 year old men or women out there that can attest to this????

In any case my point to all you younger, yet more mature for your age, junior deputy, aspiring or otherwise economists out there, realize that in being an economist (official or otherwise) you are a bit wiser than your contemporaries and that chances are any problems you have arising from courting people your own age are not due to you, but the likelihood everybody else is insane.