Over at the NYTimes there's a little screed about adults riding scooters

[conuly]

Apparently they shouldn't because Mr. Aaboe has arbitrarily decided it is childish.

There are comments agreeing with him. It's "No self respecting adult would ever sleep with someone who rides a child’s toy instead of walking or biking like a normal person" and "Even better is when I see an adult riding a Razor scooter while wearing a helmet. I can’t help but think, “Oh, honey, the brain damage has already been done”" and "anyone over 15 who rides a skateboard or razor looks incredibly stupid."

The irony of these people making nasty gossip about others, people they don't even know, while proclaiming themselves to be oh-so-mature is staggering. Of course, what really upsets them is that all their snide little opinions will not cause these incredibly immature people on scooters to stop having fun. (How mean of them!)

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Comments

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that Razor scooters were ideal commute vehicles - ride it to your stop, fold it and carry it on your bus or train. So much more convenient than a bike for that.

[conuly]

But they're... childish!

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

This is what we thought they would be used for. Kind of the 21st century equivalent of the Jetsons' moving sidewalks, only better because they go anywhere.