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Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up
Crown
June 2006
288 pages
ISBN: 1400080886
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Once upon a time, boys and girls grew up and set aside
childish things. Nowadays, moms and dads skateboard
alongside their kids and download the latest pop-song
ringtones. Captains of industry pose for the cover of
BusinessWeek holding Super Soakers. The average age
of video game players is twenty-nine and rising. Top chefs
develop recipes for Easy-Bake Ovens. Disney World is the
world’s top adult vacation destination (that’s adults
without kids). And young people delay marriage and
childbirth longer than ever in part to keep family
obligations from interfering with their fun fun
fun.
Christopher Noxon has coined a word for this new
breed of grown-up: rejuveniles. And as a self-confessed
rejuvenile, he’s a sympathetic yet critical guide to this
bright and shiny world of people who see growing up as
“winding down”—exchanging a life of playful flexibility for
anxious days tending lawns and mutual funds.
In
Rejuvenile, Noxon explores the historical roots of
today’s rejuveniles (hint: all roads lead to Peter Pan), the
“toyification” of practical devices (car cuteness is at an
all-time high), and the new gospel of play. He talks to
parents who love cartoons more than their children do,
twenty-somethings who live happily with their parents, and
grown-ups who evangelize on behalf of all-ages tag and
Legos. And he takes on the “Harrumphing Codgers,” who see
the rejuvenile as a threat to the social order.
Noxon tempers stories of his and others’ rejuvenile
tendencies with cautionary notes about “lost souls whose
taste for childish things is creepy at best.” (Exhibit A:
Michael Jackson.) On balance, though, he sees rejuveniles as
optimists and capital-R Romantics, people driven by a desire
“to hold on to the part of ourselves that feels the most
genuinely human. We believe in play, in make believe, in
learning, in naps. And in a time of deep uncertainty, we
trust that this deeper, more adaptable part of ourselves is
our best tool of survival.”
Fresh and delightfully
contrarian, Rejuvenile makes hilarious sense of this
seismic culture change. It’s essential reading not only for
grown-ups who refuse to “act their age,” but for those who
wish they would just grow up.
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