Thought it was going to stop at III but no, it needed a IV.
As I cast my eye around the mix of similarly aged men and women, that twenty-four-year-old sapient pearl frequently comes knocking at the threshold of my idle mind: “…Because women mature faster the men.”
I see thirty year old men who despite owning nothing of substance, still relieve the majority of their working wage at a pub urinal; I see women of a similar age and fiscal position who providing they have sufficient sexual partners to keep them occupied each weekend, feel they are maintaining prosperous lives…
To compare one to the other is impossible as ultimately, in the minds of both parties, they are doing fine.
…Perspective. As well as it being the name of my first ever post, this word appeared in the second ever Maturity instalment; as I recall a similar point was being made but without an accompanying example. It’ll be much better with an example.
Few years back, believe I was twenty-four at the time, I was friendly with a thirty-three-year-old, solo mother-of-six. I know, six. She had tumbled blindly into the aforementioned ‘sufficient sexual partners’ category sixteen years earlier and had maintained that position ever since. Of course at the time of meeting her I had owned my little house in the country for four years; something which this woman could simply not understand. “Argh, I’d never buy a house,” I remember her intoning one day, “too much stuff to go wrong.”
“I suppose,” I relied thoughtfully, “in a way that’s true – I mean, I guess your landlord would fix any problems in this place..?”
“Yeah,” she cleared her throat while leaning forward to extinguish a slender roll-your-own cigarette, “like, last month the hot water cylinder crapped out and he had to come and fix it for us.”
“Oh, that’s good, so, how much were you saying you guys pay to live here?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty good, I only pay $450 – the landlord’s pretty good, eh.”
“Right,” having no real idea of what ought to be considered a ‘pretty good’ weekly price for a five bedroom, timber-clad home in northwest Christchurch, “so you pay him $450 each week to fix your hot water cylinder once..?”
“Yeah, oh and other stuff though…”
“But even if you wanted to, you’d have no chance of ever building up a deposit for your own place..?”
“Nah, but I wouldn’t want my own place eh, too much hassle.”
“Yeah, so you say, but I mean you’re slaving that tight little butt off to pay for this house as well as feeding, clothing and schooling six kids -”
“Yeah but the Government helps eh, so it’s not that bad.”
“It could be a lot better – I mean, you pay 450 a week, shit, I only pay 175, and at the end of that, I’ll own a house.”
“Yeah but you were lucky…”
“Lucky, how?”
“I dunno, like, you knew what you were doing, you started saving for a deposit young…”
Lucky..? I remember thinking with chagrin, really? You think because I didn’t spend my adolescence just living for the moment; you think because I had the sense to implement some teenaged foresight, you think I’m lucky?
I realise the above episode does not apply to all women, and given the six kids I can almost understand her desire for the apparent simplicity offered by rental properties but as a general rule, younger people’s unwillingness to accept any more responsibility in life than is absolutely necessary is a frighteningly common theme.
Article by Tim Walker
Edited by Seoul O Mum
Photography by O Lyv Year