Around the time that film cameras were still being bought, slightly before the digital camera revolution took hold, my brother Severino and I competed regarding the number of millimeters we owned.
If my brother showed up with a camera whose zoom lens went from 75mm to 200mm, I would have to try to top that with a lens as wide as 74 and as long as 201mm. Well, cameras just don’t work that way. You can’t buy a lens of a specific size the way you would a skein of yarn or a bolt of cloth.
With the ubiquity of digital cameras, people now seem content to brag about the number of megapixels their camera has, the way people tout horsepower, interest rates, gigabytes and implants.
As long as humans have been around, there’s always been a need to make comparisons. We have to be stronger, richer, smarter, wiser. One way is to attack youth, as if it were something to be avoided rather than a necessary step to maturity.
In fact, the very concept of maturity is in itself puzzling.
Let me explain:
I was trying out a new TV channel, Turner Classic Movies, which shows films that had plots and opening and closing credits that don’t last for hours. As I watched two movies this week — one of them was “Every Girl Should Be Married� — I noticed a common thread: the supreme put-down was “You’re acting like a child.�
All right, then, what’s the harm? Are children by definition obnoxious, immature, difficult to get along with? Now, before you answer that, I acknowledge there’s a certain energy quotient that takes over hormonally crazed teens, a condition I learned about first hand, as a high school freshman, then as a teacher of high school freshmen and still later as a parent of freshmen (or, as my politically correct friends may say, “freshpersons�).
But are children of an ilk that provokes a put-down on every mention of youth, as the movie did, when the protagonist said of his paramour, “You’re a mere child. Why don’t you grow up?�
That’s much like the case in which a kindergarten teacher sent Johnny home with a note to his parents: “Close observation shows that Johnny is immature.� The note was couched in a way that carried an implicit charge that such immaturity may result in expulsion.
The parent then sent the following note back to the teacher: “If Johnny can’t be immature in kindergarten, when can he be?�
Notice the prevalence of age-based put-downs. I recall as a teen discussing what I believe was too simple a concept to be debating. My point was that a particular major league player, who’d started playing in the 1940s, was obviously much more experienced than someone who joined the pros in the ‘50s.
Well, the other person zoomed in only to the dates, insisting — I don’t know why — that the higher numbers (‘50s) obviously denote more
experience, in the same way older people have more experience than
callow youth. He was saying, in effect that someone born in a higher-
numbered year was older than a product of an earlier date.
He had it backwards. But no matter. A neighborhood nurse who entered the grocery store at that moment, weighed in. A teen’s arguing (not quarreling) with a “more mature� person must have smacked of arrogance and insolence.
“How old are you anyway?� she asked. I told her 14. “Well, you’re
just a child. But at 14 you should be old enough to know you’re
wrong,� she said. The nursely put-down was inevitable. It was coming
no matter the logic of the discussion. Therefore, to her, there’s a
certain answer key that only people of a certain vintage are heir to.If I’d told the nurse I’d just that moment left an orgy celebrating
my centennial, her reply likely would have been, “You mean to tell me you’re that old and still haven’t learned your math?�Well, that does it. If it’s right, it shouldn’t matter who said it.
But notice how it does matter. Notice how the pious and platitudinous
pontifications of politicians become profound, even though lesser
mortals may have uttered the same words but lacked the advantage of a soapbox or bevy of press aides.
In my own upbringing, I used to be amazed at how the more mature
adults were quick to bring in the heavy hitters during a difference
of opinion. First to be attacked was the youth, which to some older
people was the same as immaturity. Hasn’t anybody on the planet ever known someone young and nevertheless mature, or an old person who lacked judgment? Does age automatically confer a degree of maturity and sagacity?
Soon entering the discussion would be various appeals to authority,
in which the more mature person would say something like, “I know
lots of people who played in the major leagues and they could prove
you wrong.� or “What does a kid like you know about baseball?�
And if that failed, the sagacious adult would make it really
personal: “I’ll bet your Mom and Dad would be disappointed hearing
that you don’t know the difference between young and old ballplayers.�
Some people really swing wildly.
As a mere child struggling in a world that didn’t brook divergent
points of view, I must have rattled nuns, priests, parents, older
siblings and older others by constantly questioning things. Perhaps
the act of questioning itself indicated lack of maturity on the part
of a mere child, the dictum that youths shouldn’t question adults
having been inbred in us.
All of the above makes perfect sense to me. The obvious conclusion
ought to be that childishness and immaturity are just fine, in their
own time.
That said, I have more adult matters to pursue. I’m eager to tell my
older brother all about the camera I’m getting for Christmas. It has
a lens that goes from 68mm to 212mm and has all kinds of megapixels and gigabytes. Much more than my brother’s Instamatic.