Getting Away with Kidulting

“The Child is Father of the Man” —William Wordsworth

I am the problem with the world. Yes, ‘tis finicky I, as Chesterton insisted. Blame for the American democracy’s immature impetuousness crashes upon my lank figure like an Acme anvil. And as I accordion fore and aft, budgies nimbusing around my flattened brow, sharded teeth flapping, I gurgle my defense: not sorry!

Harrisburg writer Ryan Zickgraf attests that man-children are crushing America under the weight of their polyvinyl-chloride collectibles. The sprouting of “kidults” creates a mockery of responsible self-government. “The collapse of adulthood and the rise of self-infantilized, perpetual children” is leading to “demographic decline,” as men opt for button-mashing Nintendo Switch instead of rescuing a real-life Princess Zelda from maidenhood, or for dropping $80 on a glowing Glactus popcorn bucket rather than paying for a date’s ticket and Buncha Crunch, or preferring to assemble a 7,500-piece Millennial Falcon Lego over taking a shower.

Zickgraph rattles off more examples of popular Peter Pan indulgences: YA pop novels; stress-free video games like Animal Crossing; dragon-dotted prestige television; Marvel movies; and the menacing stuffed keychain creatures known as Labubu.

That twentysomethings, and even those over the dreaded three-zero bar, are in thrall to these escapist hobbies bespeaks rank patheticness. Back in the good, gritty days, young yanks were conscripted and shipped overseas to build character by collapsing bulletridden on foreign beaches, their heavy-shotted skin fraying in the surf. That was how a man lived in his prime! His virility tested on the smoke-black battlefield, and then again in bombed-out brothels with half-starved cocottes while on leave.

Now the only wars we gelded chappies fight are Call of Duty online deathmatches. And our springing libido? Channeled into so many fathoms of online porn that a computer server the size of San Marino is needed to store it all.

The arch-feminist objective of de-machofying Uncle Sam is complete—no henpecking needed. Men sterilized themselves over gaudy goodies. Simone de Beauvoir applauds from her lonely Montparnasse grave.

I’m primally compelled to take exception to Zickgraph, if only to ward off the gimlet gaze from the three-inch Charmeleon figure on my office desk. Extended adolescence can tug a society into obsolescence, in the same manner that decadence, slothfulness, venality, vanity, and prodigality can. But there’s an easy, guilt-free way to enjoy the callow gewgaws of your green days. Since the best example a columnist can display is himself, I’ll obligingly serve.

This past weekend, I lived life like the retro meme: purchasing and ripping Pokémon card packs; playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time; watching episodes of the first iteration of Power Rangers. It’s 2025. I’m 37 years old.

How could I frolic in all these puerile pursuits while early in onset middle age, my pate going pilgarlic, limbs aching in early hours, and not feel an unbearable lightness of my being?

The solution is so simple, obvious, and push-buttongingly easy that the late Billy Mays—an idol of my fresh-faced idyll—could coin money with it. The secret to perpetuating childhood lies in perpetuating the species: have your own children.

Did I seriously boot up Ocarina of Time and take a few sword-swirls on the joystick? You betcha. But I didn’t do so in a tenebrous, subterranean dwelling, reposed on a dingy, threadbare couch in my undercrackers, Cheez-Its pressed into the carpet. I played the game with my kids, asking for their assistance in conquering the Forest Temple’s myriad of tunnel-twisted puzzles. Did I also open up a half-dozen Pokémon boosters? Not actually. Mes filles clawed the cellophane off, keeping the cards, except for full-art pulls that were promptly dad-taxed. And did I subject my wizened faculties to flashy lycra-draped tokusatsu? But, of course. My youngest could watch the episode where Rita Repulsa siccs Pudgy Pig on the Angel Grove food festival six times straight without asking so much for a lav break.

Do I do my race—the American millennial male—a disservice by bitterly clinging to my Duck Hunt Zapper and Wishbone volumes? Perhaps in the eyes of some fathers, who think it more appropriate to shove their littles before a “smart” idiot box beaming CoComelon into their impressionable amygdala. Or worse, hand their smartphones over to fidgeting toddlers, letting the algorithm work its chthonic wonders.

My Oakeshottian sympathies overrule letting modern culture-makers bore into my children any more than necessary. I practice stare decisis parenting. Reading dozens of reviews of the latest “Little Mermaid” cartoon on Common Sense Media to determine if any singing crustaceans identity as anti-colonialist agender agitators is too cumbersome. The X-Men animated series worked for me in the glorious ‘90s—it’ll work just as well for my girls, no sexpest-produced reboots necessary. Passing down one’s leisurely folkways has the added pedagogical benefit of teaching the proper way of wasting hours. Amusements are, after all, salutory to the soul. As the prince of paradox also asserted, “adults lack the strength and seriousness to the enormous undertaking that is devoting one’s life to play.” Plucking plotsies from eras past and pulling them temporally to today keeps good custom alive.

All the more, holding down a mortgage, inching utility bills, and a hefty private school tuition, plus the years spent changing soiled diapers, and the emetic diseases my immune system was battered with along the way, earn me the option of pushing rewind on life’s tape, replaying highlights from an unharried era. And at certain fleeting moments, as I’m demonstrating to my wowed chickadees the proper way to execute Super Mario’s double wall-jump, a few double IPA cans dry at my side, I can almost visualize myself back in the beige wainscoted den of my mother’s house, pulling off the same ambidextral maneuver—a glimpse out of time.

Just as ice cream is justified by first choking down one’s steamed broccoli, and how an extra three, four, OK, maybe seven, beers are belted just by making it to Friday evening, guilty pleasures shouldn’t be entertained without prior strain. As economists teach, you can’t consume what you don’t first produce.

Being a kidult isn’t embarrassing, nor does it heap shame on the nation, if you assume the responsibility of inculturating the next generation. Otherwise, you’re just another Chardonnay&Netflix shitlib sleeping alone in a one-bedroom ringed by Labubus. The country’s got a glut of those already.