Quick Sketch: Infantalism

 I dress like I dress when I was 16. Basically. Every day.

Yet one of my concerns for society is infantalism, or infantilization or whatever. Basically, all of society baby-boomer down being in a holding pattern, denied real responsibilities and therefore real maturity.

That's why I generally feel in a land of little children, I as an adolescent am king. I walk around in the costume of a big kid who does big kid things, who scrapes his knee and sucks it up, mummy doesn't rush out to kiss it better and delicately cover it with a mickey mouse band aid and take me for icecream.

I don't have to run my fucking ice cream preferences by anyone because I buy my own icecream and I live with the fucking consequences.

Anyway, last week "The Natural Confectionary Company" who make confectionary out of fructose instead of glucose to the indifference of my blood sugar levels, was on special. One of the few cost of living effects I with my crappy tastes have experienced is noticing bags of gelatinous snakes, gelatinous frogs, gelatinous babies and gelatinous beans are like fucking $5 now, not $3 and that's not too upsetting because I'd rather be priced out of bad habits and self medicating than have to overcome it with willpower. 

I'm not going to steal some old ladies pension cheque to finance a sweet tooth.

But they were $3.50 on special and I was like "okay" it will give me something to do as I walk home.

Anyway, I as someone who dedicates cognitive energy to the wicked problem of how to maturate a population that has been under the thumb of a generational cohort for like half a century saw this guy on a scooter coming up the footpath toward me.

Thanks to poorly planned housing extentions, it wasn't a footpath where if I stuck left, he'd pass by my right and that would be that, but given this dickbag was scooting along the footpath I measured him up as unreasonable and ducked into a gateway or driveway to wait for him to pass.

It must have been a driveway because this cocktard stopped as he passed me and said:

"How good are those lollies."

Not quite a question, not quite a statement. An Australian rhetoricalism I haven't experienced in quite some time.

I said:

"They're alright. They're on special at the moment."

And just like that, I'm in a street eating from a bag of lollies talking to a guy on a scooter. Of course I should be worried about infantalism.

He probably asked how much and I probably told him and which supermarket chain I got them from. He told me his plans for the day:

"I think I might buy some today."

I forget how we wrapped this inanity up between us. But I left with some chagrin and plenty of ambivalence.

Something that definitely needs doing, I feel, is conversing with strangers in the street. That's what community is made from and smart phones are how to be an arsehole everywhere you go.

But, like, it is humbling to have a conversation about lollies with another grown ass man, possibly with mental issues but possibly not; on a scooter.

Fuck man. Shit.