prescriptivist's plight

There's this fantasy, right? About cool kids, trodden down, who set themselves free.

They go crazy. They start reaching for the stars, and reaching them. They start jumping from the roof to the moon.

Getting jobs. Finding partners. Eating good. Getting better.

Moving out. Moving on. Kicking it with the folks they really love. Doing a whole bunch of shit nobody even knows about, because they have the option to keep to themselves, and they take it. They're cool! They take it.

They do all that because they want to. Because they always wanted to. Because goddamn, isn't this great?

But that's just the fantasy. Some of it comes true, yeah. I'm sure. At least one kid's got to have done it, just to see if it was really all out there for the taking, for the making or breaking.

The rest of them are timid, tight. They expand their bubbles by microcosms, invisible to the macroscopes of the rest of the world, of their community, of their own minds. Maybe they buy a video game console, an air fryer, a pair of fuzzy slippers. Maybe they try climbing onto the roof, eating in bed.

Not that it's advisable to share all your hair off all at once in a fit of freedom, first thing. A mohawk's one step. Skinning your head's another.

These kids are conditioned so hard they don't even know it, and when it comes to the real serious stones of agency, they stand down. Put 'em off. Give in to the voice that tells them they still can't do that. Couldn't. Shouldn't. Wouldn't. Won't.

And it's not their fault, now, is it? It doesn't do any good for the rest of us to shout at them what they should be doing now. They've got to decide it for themselves. Really, they do.

The shame still rules, unless eaten. The greatest feat is swallowing it.