He’d rather put life’s call on hold

Ryan Ernst

I don't want to grow up.

I don't want to get a job, make payments, put food on the table, establish a financial portfolio, enter the rat race, complain about the market, climb the social ladder or network.

Throughout my life I've suffered from this Peter Pan syndrome. Girls have told me I'm too immature. Friends have told me to grow up. My parents have told me to buckle down and get serious about things.

And graduation is on the horizon. Reality is soon going to hit me like a freight train, and there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm going to have to stop eating cereal for dinner, stop going to the bar "just because," and stop staggering out of bed at three in the afternoon with pillowcase creases indented a half-inch in the side of my cheek.

There will be no more roughhousing, lollygaging, tomfoolery, monkeying around or shenanigans. And I'm not quite ready to give up those things yet.

College is like a big party, and I'm starting to feel like that last party guest. He's the kid who won't go home and nobody is quite sure why. There is no real reason for him to be there. Everyone else has moved on; they all had their fun and now it's all over. But not me, oh no. I'm sitting over in the corner, while the hostess yawns and checks her watch, a few minutes shy of chasing me out with a broom.

Time is indeed up, and people keep asking me what I'm going to do after school.

"You got a job lined up?"

"Any good leads?"

"You been looking at apartments?"

No, no and no. The only lead I'm looking to line up is the one that helps me find a job from about noon to four with full benefits where my title is "bubble-wrap popper," "Christmas present unwrapper" or "television remote controller." That's what I'm holding out for right now. But I wasn't always this focused on a career.

For a while I told my parents that I was going to set a world record after graduation. I contacted the good people at Guinness and apparently there is no world record for sitting on one's parents' couch for the longest period of time. I figured about a year would give me the record for a decent amount of time. And let's face it, if I'm sitting next to a guy during the hiring process and we have the same exact resume and experience, but I have a world record and he doesn't, who do you think is getting the bubble-popper position?

The world-record plans, however, have been put on hold because of my parents' announcement concerning a certain returning son named Ryan and a certain monthly payment called rent.

At first I scoffed at the idea.

"Now you guys know I can't pay rent. I don't have a job," I laughed.

"We know. Find one," they said, apparently not seeing the same humor in this obviously impossible request - cutting the umbilical cord and slapping me across the face with it.

And so here I am, just a few weeks shy of graduation with no job, no prospects, no money. So if you see a kid Uptown for no apparent reason with a line of bed-head on the side of his face, buy him a drink, but try not to ask him what his post-graduation plans are.

- Ernst is a senior journalism major. Send comments to re340397.