Lions and Tigers and Kickball, oh my!

So, last night was interesting in several ways. Way the first… Though Orpheus’ work friends are younger and generally cuter than mine, they are little more interesting. What the old folks lack in energy and vital interest is generally more than made up for by discussion of things they’ve actually done, as opposed to endless gushing over stuff they want to do, or are mildly excited about. The older I get, the more exasperating hanging out with school kids becomes. Furthermore, their bountiful energy is tiring, and lack of depth cloying. Even if a particularly fine specimen is full to the brim of knowledge on one subject, it tends to be the only topic of discussion worth pursuing with said butterfly. There aren’t any good dirty stories for most young people to tell, only raunchy accidents and happenstance encounters which yield fruit much later in life as storytelling becomes more important, and novel experience coalesces into meaningful smut. The long of it is, these kids’ empty eyes and stupid grins, their bragging over recipes that consume whole cans of high-sodium crap is annoying… Especially because I’m not THAT much older, so their ignorance is a horrifyingly recent mirror into my own similarly shallow past.

This, of course, is not at all true across the board. And, when I’m fair, it’s really only in group situations that I find college kids, well, kid-like. Under normal circumstances, and when alone with a younger adult, they are adults first, over-excitable only after the clothes come off, or too much expensive alcohol is imbibed. Orpheus was done with school when I started dating him, and he, while similarly inexperienced in some ways, has always been a deliberator. He doesn’t like losing control, as he puts it, and therefore tends to do at least a little good, methodical research before entering into almost any enterprise. He is stable, strong, and fiercely protective. If he says he’ll do a thing, he does it, even if it’s not quite on-time. For his small inconsistencies, I forgive him, and love him all the more. He’s not exactly par for his age-group. In fact, in the worst situations, I’d call him a birdie at worst, and an eagle or hole-in-one in most others, even fresh out of school a year ago. Plus, he’s totally cute enough to get away with murder, so that tends to help. But some of the kids he works with are plain dull, as dish-water, even.

This made dinner bad enough. I brought the fanciest, most meticulously prepared dips some of these kids had ever seen. They brought, well, the aforementioned five cans of high-sodium crap tossed into Tupperware and called fancy. Or, in the case of the boys, plastic-wrapped high-fat meat byproduct. Then they played the “And this one time, at Band Camp” game, round-table style. This caused me to eat far too much of everything, as the only way to keep my acerbic comments inside my head was to keep my mouth full to the brim with high-fat meats, which I’ve been staying away from for over a week. Afterwards, we played kick-ball. This proved to be a miserable experience, because I’m woefully out of shape. I just recently at least started doing some calisthenics and stretches again, as I’m disgusted by the sight of my own naked body in the mirror, but I haven’t yet gotten back on the bike, and done any cardio beyond heavy breathing in the bedroom. With the sweat pouring off my brow, the breath coming ragged twixt my lips, and the entire world reduced to the connection point between my toe and a ragged little ball, I felt ancient. I collapsed almost as soon as we made it back to my place, in agony and defeat.

I think I have to start biking again, sooner than later.

Also, I could’ve used a nice barf last night to rid myself of porcine toxins heretofore unknown to my system. Hopefully, this post has my bile against the young out... And, at least my team won. ;-)