The Sunday Times
July 29, 2007
Hey, kidult youÂ’re not fooling anyone
Comedian Richard Herring, skateboard wannabe and general 40-year-old teenager, confronts the neuroses of the midlifers who refuse to grow up. The gameÂ’s up, he says, but they donÂ’t know any other way to live
I turned 40 two weeks ago. Even as I write those words I still refuse to believe them. Me? 40? It doesnÂ’t make sense. My calendar must be malfunctioning. I still feel like IÂ’m 20 . . . unless I am walking up some stairs. I still behave as if I am 20. In fact I behave more like I am 20 than I did when I was 20. So I canÂ’t be 40. I am nothing like a 40-year-old.
When my dad was 40 he had been married for 17 years, had three children, two of them teenagers. He had worked hard as a teacher all his adult life and recently been promoted to headmaster, wore a suit and tie every day and had proper grown-up hobbies like listening to classical music, gardening, golf, DIY and making elderflower wine.
I, conversely, am single, I’ve never been married and am childless. I am sloshing around in the insecure (in both senses) world of stand-up comedy. Most nights I go drinking with other people in their twenties (“other” because I am in my twenties, remember), most daytimes I play on my Nintendo Wii. I have the latest Arctic Monkeys CD, wear Converse trainers and recently acquired a skateboard – though tellingly I am too scared to be on it when it’s moving, but it’s good to casually hold, while walking down the road, nodding at other sk8erbois (it means skater boys, grandad). I have no practical skills whatsoever, paying other people to mend broken stuff and even do my cleaning.
If I stop and think about it my life is pathetic, so generally I donÂ’t stop and think about it. IÂ’ve been in total denial. Which is why I buy trendy, figure hugging T-shirts. Because if I am going to deny the fact that I am old, I might as well deny the fact that I am fat as well.
Reassuringly, I am not alone. While many people in their forties have families and responsibilities, an increasing minority still resemble teenagers. Scary, wrinkled, grey-haired teenagers, with some kind of terrifying premature ageing disease, but teenagers nonetheless. ItÂ’s enough of a phenomenon to have been given its own portmanteau label: kidult. TheyÂ’re adults, but they behave like kids. Which is at least better than being a kid that behaves like an adult. Though I was probably one of those too.
So whatÂ’s the cause of this new social trend? Is it just a collective midlife crisis? Partly, perhaps. The start of oneÂ’s fifth decade is an unsettling and upsetting landmark. In my latest Edinburgh Fringe show, aptly titled, Oh F***, IÂ’m 40!, I discuss the perspective that being halfway through your life suddenly gives you. ItÂ’s like getting to the top of a hill. For your first 39 years youÂ’re struggling up the steep slopes, heading for the top as fast as possible, not even looking around you, desperate to see whatÂ’s on the other side. Finally you are at the summit and get a clear view both ahead and behind.
You look back and you see a lush, fecund valley full of cavorting young people who wanted to be your friends, but ahead of you is a sheer cliff dropping into a stony, icy crevasse, littered with the bodies of the dead and dying. You want to turn round and do the climb again at a leisurely pace, but you are manhandled into a toboggan and sent whizzing down the slope. You might get thrown off at any point and die or get to the bottom and die. All that is certain is you are going to die, soon, along with all the other idiots who rushed to get over the hill only to find that the hill was what it was all about.
So it is perhaps inevitable that, faced with this sudden realisation that we are over the hill, many of us make one last grasp at the green grass of youth: desperately trying to get fit in the gym, buying a sports car, having an affair with your secretary. But this is usually just a temporary aberration and I don’t think qualifies you as a true kidult. A midlife crisis is something a grown-up has. We kidults suffer from Peter Pan syndrome – we never grow up in the first place. We remain children, because unlike our parents we are able to.
My parentsÂ’ generationÂ’s lives were all pretty much mapped out: they had limited choices about what they could do professionally, needed to work to survive and got married early either because sex outside of wedlock was frowned upon, or because they had had sex out of wedlock and pregnancy had followed. A proper job and the responsibility of a family will soon make a 20-year-old grow up, whether they want to or not.
But my generation had more choice. While my dad almost automatically followed his dad into the teaching profession, I had career options. Perhaps foolishly, but fittingly for someone who wanted to remain puerile, I chose writing and performing comedy. Even had that been a viable profession in the 1960s, my dad could never had gone down it, a) because he is really not funny in spite of his best efforts and b) because he had a wife and young children to support. I was in debt for the first decade of my career. If IÂ’d had a family, IÂ’d be teaching history in a comprehensive right now. And I might well have been happier.
Effective contraception along with the subsequent shifting social attitude to sex outside marriage means that my generation has much more choice about when and if they have kids. It means marriage and responsibility can be postponed and we are able to focus entirely on ourselves. If that isnÂ’t a big step to becoming a perpetual teenager I donÂ’t know what is.
Though in reality kidults will probably be focused on their careers – working hard to play hard – they have the kind of careers that don’t slot into the traditional 9 to 5. And their spare time is all their own.
To be honest I still always assumed I would be in a serious relationship and have spawned progeny by the time I was 40 and part of me regrets that I havenÂ’t settled down. But mainly IÂ’m glad. I would never have stayed married to the women I thought I loved when I was 25. I was more of an idiot then than I am now. I donÂ’t think anyone should get married until theyÂ’re 35. Imagine having to live your life by any other decision you made at 22.
Having said that, when I was about that age I did make a pact with my friend Emma that if we were both single at 40 we would marry each other. It seemed so unlikely that it was a promise I made all too readily. As it turns out, both of us are still fancy-free, because Emma is a kidult too. Female kidults are rare, because to be a girl kidult you really canÂ’t have children yourself or even desperately want them. You canÂ’t be a kidult if you are a mum. I know women with grown-up children who regress a bit when they are in their forties, but the bubble will be burst when your 20-year-old child tells you to grow up.
Women who arenÂ’t that bothered about children can ensure they donÂ’t have them. You will spot them, dressed up in gear from Topshop, looking pretty good as they have time and money to look after themselves, because theyÂ’re not looking after anyone else, generally being pesky and having the time of their lives.
But I canÂ’t marry Emma. Kidults canÂ’t intermarry, mainly because nothing would ever get done, and what of the progeny of such an unholy union? It doesnÂ’t bear thinking about.
I must admit IÂ’ve had fun, but sometimes worry IÂ’ve left it too late. Too late to find someone, too late to have children. But thereÂ’s still a little time left on the toboggan ride to death. And if I spawn at the right moment IÂ’ll be able to enjoy my kids while they are still cute and giving me unconditional love and then die just as they are approaching their teenage years, saving myself an awful lot of unpleasantness.
Writing this has made me wonder why I am a kidult. Am I trying to compensate for some perceived privation in my childhood? If my parents had just bought me a Scalextric would none of this have happened? Am I making up for being so square during my teens and twenties? Or is it just as I originally posited, I do it because I can?
I am the first to admit my life can be slightly depressing (whose isn’t?), but it’s hard to change. Doubly so for me, because I am a comedian. It’s my job to be childish. I have made a living portraying this foolish, immature, eternal teenager on stage. Now I look in the mirror and see this greying, wrinkled, gonk-faced old man looking back at me. If I carry on with the puerile schtick I am in danger of turning into the English Wee Jimmy Krankie. Though I would never marry my own brother – however desperate things got.
While fairytales can come true, it can happen to you, if youÂ’re young at heart. I think as with most things it is a question of balance. Being grown-up doesnÂ’t mean we canÂ’t occasionally be silly and have pointless fun, but if you only do the stupid stuff youÂ’re missing out too. And I am going to change. Before I am 50. I wouldnÂ’t want things to get embarrassing.
I guess what I am saying is that if youÂ’re still young, slow down a bit and enjoy the climb, and if youÂ’re over the hill like me then thereÂ’s nothing wrong with trying to do a bit of the descent on your skateboard. Might as well have some fun. ItÂ’s all downhill from here.
Who are they?
- Any middle-aged person who is in a video games shop on their own and is confidently selecting items without having to ask an assistant what game it is that their children wanted
- Anyone over the age of 15 who is standing on or (more likely) holding a skateboard
- They use words they imagine “the kids” on “the street” are currently employing, but tragically are actually about 18 months out of date (eg sk8erboi)
- Their supermarket trolley contains seven microwaveable meals for one, booze, crisps, sweets, almost certainly at least one Dairylea Dunker and nothing else
- They claim they read graphic novels and that their shelves are lined with collectible figurines, when you would argue that they have a house full of comics and crappy plastic toys. Ironically, they wouldnÂ’t be able to afford all this crap if they actually had any kids
Are you one?
- You were born in the 1960s but have a page on Facebook, and think this makes you cool (even though you mainly use it to play its version of Scrabble)
- The average age of the people you socialise with is half your own age or less
- You think anyone wearing a suit must automatically be older than you, and get a bit of a jolt when you find out theyÂ’re only 32
- You spend every Sunday morning watching the Hollyoaks omnibus, even though youÂ’re 40 and have seen every episode already on its daily evening showing, arguing you are enjoying the subtle variation of seeing the show being signed for the deaf
- You are or have ever been a member of the Rolling Stones
Richard Herring will be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe from Thursday. See www.whatareyoulaughingat.co.uk
