When my puberty ends...

This past weekend I had the distinct pleasure of being left alone at my house. My lovely wife and my son had gone to my in-laws for the weekend (and no, our relationship is still good and there was no plate throwing and cursing at all…Thank you very much!) She had to attend a family wedding near her parent’s house and I was unable to attend because I work on Saturdays. So from Friday to Sunday afternoon, I have the house all to myself. A man, with no wife and kid. Just a man on his own, who can walk around the house in his boxers without a care in the world. I am my own island. I have become a single man again!

First, let me explain something to all of you out there. We all go through two sets of puberty in our lives. One is the physical manifestation of puberty where your voice changes, hairs begin to develop everywhere and you get acne on your face and back (back-ne). That usually happens in your “teen” years. The other type of puberty is the emotional one. Just like when you felt awkward with the physical changes, in your 20’s, you go through an emotional change. This is a feeling of insecurity, random anger followed by depression, confusion and just not really sure about what you want in life. Why am I telling you this? This pretty much sums up how my single life was.

So as single man, you can pretty much assume I was immature as heck. Don’t get me wrong, I was still a law-abiding, responsible, and determined young man but I still did a lot of dumb things. I’d go out and drink with my friends ‘til the break of dawn pretty much 4 days out of the week, smoke 1 ½ pack of cigarettes a day, attended various night club establishments, hit on way too many girls (both pretty and ugly) and pretty much acted out of control. Still, the only criminal offense I have is parking tickets. Yeah , ok I wasn’t out of control like some of those kids on the Maury Povich show but you get the idea.

My wife had told me of this news two weeks ago. My reaction, oddly, was “huh?” rather than a “Yippee Kay Yay!!!” The single John would have pretty much said “Goodbye, so long, don’t forget to write…” and would have helped her pack as soon as she made the announcement. But when she had told me that her and my boy were going to be away for the weekend, I felt…. abandoned. I began to ask “what for?!” and when she’ll be back. It sounds weird but that’s how I felt. I still agreed to it and then started to plan what I was going to do on that weekend. My first reaction was to call some of my old buddies and go out and drink. The old John would call up his buddies and his fellow gang of merry men would go out on a drop of a hat. The festivities would begin at 8pm and wouldn’t end until 4am. So I called up my friends and most of them can’t make it out. Why? Because they have kids like me. Our social gathering has been so limited due to our lives that most of the time we do our communicating via Facebook or playing online games on our Playstation3. Still I was able to get a hold of one of my buddies. We planned on meeting for some beers and dinner by ourselves. That soon changed. My friend calls me up the next day and tells me that he can’t go out to a bar and watch a game. Instead, he invites me over to his house to watch the game with his wife and kids on a Saturday evening (this where you can picture me slapping my forehead hard and hand the hand slide down my face very rigidly).

On Friday, my wife and my son leave. This is what I ended up doing on the first day of singlehood: After work, went to the post office to deliver a package, went to the bank to make deposits, bought a six pack of Miller light, went home, had a very sensible and nutritious dinner, checked my mail box and found out that the new FIFA soccer came in, played the said soccer game for 1 hour, drank only 2 beers while playing game, did school work for 1 ½ hour and went to sleep by 12 am. Oh and I forgot to mention that I had to confirm a dentist appointment for next week... Pretty mundane, huh? Single John would have not done this at all. Single John’s dinner would have not been that sensible. He would ate a block of cheese and a foot long stick of Hickory Farm Summer beef sausage. He wouldn’t buy a six pack , that would be for wimps. He would’ve bought a 30 pack and finished a third of that within 4 hours. He would have gone out with his friends and try and get many phone numbers of the opposite sex. Single John would have come home around 4am and would stay up another 3 hours watching stupid stuff like “Jackass” (By the way, I recently watched the latest “Jackass” DVD…I thought what they did was funny as heck but after watching it now, they just seemed stupid. Really stupid like starving for attention stupid.) In my honest opinion, if Single John found out what Married John did on his free time, Single John would have grabbed him and pile- drived him to the floor, pick him up by the shirt collar and do a paint brush slap across his face and ask “What the hell happened to you man?!” The sad thing is I think both Single and Married John would enjoy watching this actually happen. I have a feeling that my Saturday night would end up being pretty much the same as my Friday.

Maybe I’ve gotten older and more responsibilities in life now. I guess rather than going out and doing God-knows-what in the wee hours of the night, I want to spend that time with my wife and kid. I still stay up late at night but mostly because I am feeding my son and trying to put him to sleep. Rather than getting random phone numbers of girls at clubs who I know will pretty much end up breaking my heart, I want to spend that time with my wife and just being comfortable to our familiarities. Rather than stuffing my face with a block of dairy and beef by products, I want to eat healthier and live longer. I guess my emotional puberty has ended.