Published on 12, July, 2020
I’ve seen a few posts recently about differences between older and younger autistic people and their attitudes, and I remember at least one thread about whether or not we look younger than neurotypicals.
I’m curious to know whether the “older” among you actually feel your age.
I know I look much younger than my age and I’m in great physical health but I also feel psychologically much younger than my true age. Perhaps because I feel I’m still learning social rules everyone else mastered by the age of 20? Or because I never got to be a parent, which must be one of the life experiences that truly signals to people that they are no longer the younger generation?
My dad felt very much that the world had changed and left him behind and so he had nothing in common with the young, but I never really felt I had anything in common with other people even why I was chronologically young myself so I don’t feel any more alienated now that I’m older.
Do you know a little while ago I went to a maid café. And if you’ve ever been to a maid café you’ll see the maids all have profiles listing things about their background and their blood types and also their ages. And as is often the case every age was listed as “forever 17.” This is almost a uniformly followed tradition in maid Cafes now.
but from my point of view if I could get the government to issue me a driving license that said “forever 18” under DOB I would. I’m aware I no longer look like I could be just a few years older than 18 but I see no reason to give people a pigeonhole to put me in. If there’s any doubt about it let them assume I’m younger. Especially since I probably act a lot younger than I am.
of course I identify with the youth culture of the 90s and 00s. Actually more specifically with the subculture I came into contact with in the 90s and 00s. And the thing about subculture is it’s the place that people go to relive their youths. You get 50 year old goths squeezing themselves into latex corsets to dance under the flashing lights and the way they did when they were young. But the sub cultures keep bringing in new young people some more successfully than others. It’s hilarious to find some person in their teens or 20s who turns around and talks about this great new band Nirvana they’ve heard about.
sub cultures have always been places that people who feel like outsiders congregate and in this sense there’s a certain ageless quality to them.
that’s said looking at mainstream culture vicariously through the lens of a handful of relatively normal friends I used to have I would say there is a period in life around ones late teens and early 20s when one gets to make up the social rules oneself. Not on your own but collectively in a small clique of maybe 10 people or less you can create your own rules for how the world should work. And as you move into university that clique grows a little wider maybe becomes 50 or 100 people, A group in your student society perhaps.
I have to say for myself I would dearly love to get back to that. and I think that’s kind of what sub cultures are. when enough people get together and decide what they’re going to do things differently from the way the rest of society does it that things kind of persist beyond one generation to the next A subculture is born, and to some extent has more freedom and flexibility in that. And to some extent when a subculture is smaller it probably has more freedom and flexibility.
for example in many ways I preferred it when anime was a niche subculture. In those days nobody felt the need to try and make anime respectable. We knew damn well we weren’t seen as respectable and we didn’t feel the need to be.
that rebellious spirit of youth is something that I covet. And something I find sadly lacking in modern woke youth.
and let’s be blunt biologically speaking being young is just objectively better. Stronger, more adaptable, more resilient physically speaking. Many people would say more attractive subjectively speaking. I’ve heard people say that as a children they wanted to be like their grandparents because they seem so wise and respected. And I think to myself your wise grandparent would probably slap you if they heard you say that. Or at least they would if their arthritis didn’t stop them, with their creaky bones and their bleary eyes. They know wrinkles and grey hair are nothing to be envied.