FLORIDA — Allen Mullins was twenty-five years old. Mullins, a college graduate of 2004, now works as a computer technician at an office complex. He is now the ripe age of twenty-six. “I don’t know how I got so old”, ponders Mullins, as he strokes his chin. “But come to think of it–my goatee is filling in a lot better than when I was twenty-four”.
But to Mullins, the mid-to-late-twenties are not just the usual occupational and identical range of placeless demography that it is for a lot of college graduates of Generation Y. “Twenty-six might be the new thirty, but to me it is the new forty”, Mullins confidently explains. Mullins says that the mid-to-late twenties are more than they are depicted in the movies: it’s not all about having lavish apartments, khaki’s, IKEA, and being in an often demographically-displaced age bracket with people who are much older; they are also about kids, cats, and establishing relationships with new, and often boring people. Mullins doesn’t mind the lack of frequency from interesting people with goals and ambitions like he was in college. “There are a lot of great things about being twenty-six years old–like having a job, having kids, and getting married, and listening to your co-workers talk about car problems and their kids”, ponders Mullins. “I’m not married yet, but a lot of my friends are, and I think that’s a pretty good idea”.
Mullins says that now that he is twenty-six, he doesn’t have to do the ”crazy” things that he did a few years ago when he was in college. “Those were crazy times. There was a lot of partying, playing X-Box, and every relationship wasn’t a potential marriage partner”, says Mullins. “But now that I’m a mature person, I put away my X-Box, watch more TV, and I’m getting into ‘easy listening’ music”. While Mullins acknowledges that college taught him to speak his mind and to be an individual, he would rather be acquiescent due to his maturity. “You have to understand that being a mature adult is about conformity, and that we are all conformists”, he says. “Being an adult is nothing like being a teenager: it’s about watching the television shows that everyone else watches, having the same opinions, and wearing the clothes that everyone else wears”.
While John Steinbeck once wrote in Travels with Charley that maturity could not cure an itch for learning and exploration, Mullins hardly concurs. “Maturity is an itch, and I’m scratching it.”, says Mullins. ”But I don’t read much these days; I’m too busy configuring computers and watching Friday night television with a glass of wine”.
“I really like the fact that I am a grown man who goes to work configuring computer networks”, says Mullins, describing his mature identity. “I don’t have kids, but I’ve taken up wearing ‘dad clothes’– clothes my dad might wear. I cut my faux-hawk for a nice regular haircut that won’t stand out in a crowd”. But dating is still on Mullins’ mind. “Oh yeah, I’m still going after women”, he adds. “Now I can date 50 year old women and not seem like such a kid standing next to them. What a difference 12 months have made in my maturity”.
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