Children of Man

When you go “study abroad” people expect you to learn something rather vague and insubstantial whilst you’re there. I’m at the end of the experience and still not sure what exactly I was supposed to learn, but here is something I have at least attempted to learn:

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These writings are an exploration of understanding, and having been in Scotland, (specifically Glasgow) this long, I have thought about what it means to be Scottish, (specifically Glaswegian) and these are my observations:

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I sit on the bus, second story, right above the stairs (double-decker buses!) and I get to watch the people climb the steps. A young woman climbs the stairs followed by a young man in a t-shirt who is in turn followed by a kid; just a baby really, but a child of about 3 or 4. He climbs slowly, young dad is letting him make his way slowly. Dad is dressed in stylish clothes and a nice shirt. Mom is in the same hip urban style. But both seem to have settled into the roles of parent rather well… the thing to notice is the way it seems to feel; as if the idea of a kid odd. The people on the bus don’t get up to move, they don’t make room so the family can sit together. The young parents are out of place. From then on I notice the young mothers traveling alone, carting their children in strollers given to them by the state… the Dads in the monochromatic sweat-suits which denote gang membership followed behind by their four-year-old sons and daughters. The middle aged men in their oddly fitted tees and baggy-over-pocketed jeans… and the old guys finally standing around the door of the pub smoking, just down the street from the teenagers doing the same thing in front of the chip shop.

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My sense is, in a country where the government feels the need to remind its denizens to check their petrol levels, that people are uncomfortable with adult behavior. Perhaps it is the idea or reality of growing older, being a grown-up, which is unsettling. If you could join me whilst I look over the city of Glasgow you can see a country which is completed; a country entirely void of frontier. I understand now why Brits can laugh at Americans, we are still in the throws of adolescence. This Idea perhaps precisely expresses what I mean: Americans are adolescent, we look forward to the change, to growing up, to discovering our place in the world. The bit of Britain I have witnessed seems to be in something like a second childhood, a sort of senility if you will. An artifice of rebellion because deep down you know you have everything you need, you don’t even need to work for it, and you don’t really remember what it was that got you there.

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