We've run out of real problems; we're allowed to like toys.

Nerf, the company that filled my childhood with fantasies of intense gun slinging battles full of slow-motion doves, car-hood slides, and bullet proof bravado, has created a line of toy guns marketed specifically to me (I'm assuming), Nerf: Rival. Nerf figured out that the Nerf guns I had as a kid got no where near slaking my lust for being John McClane. In fact, if anything was true of my experience with Nerf as a child it's this; I did not give two skittles about their sports line (hey look! a miniature soft football with super spiral capabi....oh wait, I don't like footbasketball) and their guns - what I REALLY wanted, all the time - were supremely misrepresented in their marketing campaigns. Take a look at the epic amounts of misrepresentation below;

Despite the fact that most of my "legendary" Nerf battles as a child ended with someone yelling, "you're too far away, I can't hit you...this sucks, let's play Nintendo," we still had fun. Not the fun you see in the commercial, with arrows flying straight, flying further than 5 feet, and not requiring 15 minutes a piece to load (and apparently these kids have full size target cut-outs of their closest friends, which is definitely something I'm on board with). I am getting away from the whole reason for this post, however. I recently read an article about the "Peter Pan" market, and this came maybe 3 hours after my boys and I watched the live-action Peter Pan (2003), which is the kind of coincidence that is so lame it seems like something an 11th grader would write into their play about "all the emotions." I was blasted from multiple cultural mediums in less than 24 hours with the very modern problem of wrestling my inner desire to be a full grown 12-on-the-inside-year-old with enough money and ingenuity to create my own at home version of Neverland, full of Star Trek posters, fifteen different types of video games, a fridge full of soda, and racks upon racks of Warheads with my responsibility as a Father/Husband/American-Cheese-Burger to be not a 12 year old. 

I guess what I'm attempting to say is that I saw some great friends from a long-time back this past weekend and it made me realize that we've written the rules for adulthood in very black and white terms, even in this day and age; you're either a 'Peter Pan" who has refused to accept the adult world of budgets, storage units, and bowel regulation or you're "mature" and thus incapable of recalling the joy that accompanies doing anything that doesn't involve the words "success," "dress slacks," or "aggressive banking." And yes, I realize that there are tons of scientists and the-rapists therapists who preach balance and moderation, but it always seems to be in an either/or frame of mind. There is a time and place to be an adult with responsibilities and a totally different time and space to be "young at heart." It's also entirely possible I'm talking out of my butthole and have missed all the influential work of some super-genius who has already asserted this very thesis, but they suck and my article is better. Seeing these friends made me realize that if you're a real live boy, you can be both a mature person and fun at the same time (STOP THE PRESS!!). 

I hadn't seen many of these friends in over 8 years, but like true old friends we fell right back into old jokes and our own *unique* brand of immature banter. But...it wasn't the "revertigo" I've heard referenced before by...some TV show (probably). It was more nuanced and our conversations flowed seamlessly between hilariously simple jokes about a T-Rex being unable to swear in on the Bible in a court of law and intelligent mature conversations about gender-constructs and what it means to be a good manager (which sounds pretentious because it is and sometimes "adult" and "pretentious" are synonyms). I'm probably walking you, my dear reader, down a perhaps too familiar path, but I do feel a slight obligation to remind myself (and anyone brave enough to read this pinball article) that we all have a little Peter Pan in us the ability to be young at heart and "grown-up" at the same time. This has probably been said before, especially in our quasi new-agey stay-in-touch-with-everything culture, but it was refreshing to be around people who have grown, yet not lost their inner Nerf warrior. To them, and to those out there who understand that real adults like Lego's, I just wanted to say...thanks for existing.

My sincerest apologies for being cringe worthy sappy for yet another unfortunate post in a  blog that is still trying to pretend it's not about me.