We’re putting our quarter-life crises behind us, and getting ready for our third-life crises. We’re long enough out of school and far enough from a real job that our parents just tell our grandparents that we’re “doing fine” in the city we’re in. Time was, all our free time was party time. We’ve still got the free time – we just don’t really party. We’re learning about food allergies instead. We wouldn’t know where to get pot if we tried. We haven’t seen shrooms since that guy with the stupid jacket went to do his master’s at Queen’s. We’re completely out of the mind-blowing loop. But we’ve got a hookup for Miller Chill. We’ve got a hookup for Bud Light Lime.

We’re hitting a stride, an ontological groove. To wit, we haven’t really cared about ontology since we last found pot. But our Facebook profiles are getting sleek, lean, and efficient – no overshares, decent privacy, and distinct tones, voices and types of links posted. We chit chat on Facebook, but we get real on Gmail chat – we know to keep that Gchat box exclusive. We know our sites, we’ve got our morning log-on routines, and we haven’t been caught off-guard by the news in five years. We haven’t had the great epiphanies we hoped would set us on our paths and get us up in the morning. But we’ve stayed up ’til 6 at a friend’s parents’ cottage, bonding over that. We were drunk on Miller Chill. We were drunk on Bud Light Lime.

We don’t own homes. We don’t see ourselves owning homes for another decade at least. We don’t even have a driver’s license. But we’ve accumulated enough bargain furniture to fill most of a bedroom and one third of a living room. Our DVD and record collections are now comprehensive enough to speak for our personalities, so our personalities don’t have to speak for themselves. We’ve thrown out the band posters that aren’t aesthetically justified in hanging on our walls, and when we find a ratty old soft-core porn poster at a garage sale, we only put it up for a week before quietly putting it in storage. When we sit drinking in our barely-tasteful, mostly empty apartments, we don’t want tasteful beer to throw them in stark relief. We want Miller Chill. We want Bud Light Lime.

We’re more stylish than we were five years ago, but we’re fatter too. If we can grow a beard, we’ve got one. If we can’t, we’ve deleted the pictures of our attempts. Yeah, we still troll for sex, but it’s getting to be a bit of a chore. We’re not scared of girls, but we’re dismissively misanthropic in the wake of undergrad. We’re horny, but we recognize the value of a good night’s sleep. We’ve taken “A Man Needs A Maid” at face value once or twice. But in spite of all our creeping curmudgeonliness, we know we’ll get fed up with trolling soon enough and want a girlfriend again before winter comes. And when we groan our way out of our roommate’s La-Z-Boy to look for her, we’ll steel ourselves with Miller Chill. We’ll steel ourselves with Bud Light Lime.

We’ve found our faults, we know where our weaknesses lie, we know what we’ll work on, and we know what we just won’t be bothered to change. We’re through bettering ourselves for betterment’s own sake and we’re taking virtue on an issue by issue basis. We know that life is short and grows shorter every day, and if someone wants to call us out for drinking a light lime beer, they can go right the fuck ahead. We know what single malt tastes like and we’ve seen the bottom of a Big 10%. We’ve followed bro drinking rules, we’ve comported ourselves to snob drinking traditions, and we’ve seen what those pettinesses do to people who follow them too long or too far. If we want a drink brewed a mile underground by straight-edge scientists who dispassionately engineered a beer that, on paper, is all you want in a beer if you could only bring yourself to drink it, then we’re gonna get it. If we’re not too broke, natch. We know ourselves well enough that, at long last, we can really, truly tell other people to fuck off. We’re not dads, and odds are good that we never will be, but life has brewed us full of dad flavour without the bitter parenthood aftertaste. So say your peace, you jackass, and let us watch Cops reruns in peace. We’re dead in fifty years anyways. Forty if we drink Miller Chill. Forty if we drink Bud Light Lime.

Anyways, anyways!  Kids, me and your mother have something to tell you.  I- Yes, I know your mother isn’t here.  Well, she was busy – she had to pick up the kids from soccer practice or something.  …good point, Lindsay.  I guess I don’t actually know where she is.  But I ran this by her yesterday, and she agreed, so if you please?

Kids, it’s time you learned something.  You’re getting older, and pretty soon you’ll be legally responsible for yourselves.  Sure, that’s years off still, but you should have all the facts at your disposal.  You’re 14, 11, and 9, respectively, and you’ve believed something for years that just isn’t true, and I’m sorry to say it, but your mother and I are responsible.  We thought you’d have figured it out by now, we thought some other kids at school might have told you something, but…

Well, kids… you remember last Christmas?  When Santa brought all your gifts – the Nintendo, the sweaters, the Kideo CD?  Kids, I don’t know how to tell you this, but…

Kids, Kideo is actually a terrible band.

Sit down.  Please, please, calm down.  Kids, I… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.  I know it seems crazy, but… they’ve got no hooks, their riffs are stale, and their lyrics are facile, if not condescendingly mundane.

…but it’s the truth!  Doesn’t it make more sense this way?  I mean, the concerts are full of kids being dragged by their parents!  They’ve had years and years and countless chances, but they just haven’t achieved mainstream success – they’re a niche band!  They sing about how kids can rock – of course kids’ll like ‘em!

…of course I think you can rock, kids!  Just… just try rocking to something that actually rocks!  Try real rock!  Did you even listen to the Creedence CDs I lent you?  They don’t even rock that hard, but they still rock harder than a bunch of primary colour wigs for chrissakes.

…Gary One, that’s a hurtful thing to say.  You’re speaking out of hurt feelings.  Gary, I’m especially surprised that you hadn’t figured it out by now.  You’re 14!  What the hell are you doing listening to Kideo?  Do you… do you play them when you’re hanging out with friends?  I’ve even smelled you smoking pot – do you get high and listen to G-D Kideo?  That’s horrifying!

Don’t-  …okay, he’s gone.  Lindsay, Gary the Second, please.  Take your time, think about it, just… me and your mother just wanted you to start listening to nice music, not that mean stuff that’s out there.  You know, like we put the training wheels on when you were learning to ride your bike?

…oh, Jesus – don’t tell primary Gary I told you about training wheels.  Look, sorry… forget I brought anything up.  Here’s five bucks – go get some Popeye smokes and never breathe a word of this to anyone else.