I’ve been looking for a new roommate, which can be a painful process. Like dating, but without any possibility of sex. I was corresponding with one woman, who seemed really interested, and she asked me my age. I told her. She said, and I quote:
“Thank you for your honesty, but…”
WTF? Okay, there are several things wrong with this. First, was she looking for a roommate or romance? Maybe a new BFF? Whatever, apparently it had an age cap. The funny thing is, a lot of people would accept that as perfectly normal. Why allow anyone who is outside my generation into my world? Why not live in the eternal world of Gap commercials, interacting only with people who are within a few years of my age? Because it makes you parochial.  Or provincial. Whichever.
I’ve always had a lot of friends who were older, younger, more conservative, more liberal, and from many different cultures and backgrounds. People who believe they grow best in a world populated only with near-them clones are usually due for a shock. At some point, they will encounter a world of people who don’t share their beliefs, their predilections. I was at dinner once with a bunch of people. A woman, visiting from out of town, came from a sequestered liberal environment. She was not the most liberal person at the table, and she wasn’t in the minority. But she went into shock because her beliefs were not held by everyone in the group.
Of course you might say that, even if you want friends who are different, you’d like a roommate who is pretty much the same. But that brings us to the second f’d up thing. She thanked me for my honesty. Implying I was admitting to something less then pure about myself. My age is higher than hers, so I should just be more embarrassed about myself. Really? She’s in her 20s. Should people outside of that bracket be hidden away? Trotted out only for family gatherings where they can be socially placed and excused? It’s not just her, I really see this in a lot of twenty-something culture. They see the world as a playground that is only ruined by older people. I was like that, myself, as a teenager. But then I grew up a little, joined the world of adults.
