Mature Material

O n the way up to a recent ski trip to Canada with a bunch of male friends, Scott, Clay and I passed an exit sign for Bone Road. This prompted the question, If you lived on Bone Road, what would you call your house? The Bone Shack? Bone Manor? Home Sweet Bone? Over the next several miles, this sign provided almost as much entertainment as the exit for Scotrun, Pa., does on a trip west. A little while later, my overtired brain cranked out an unpleasant thought. “At what point will we stop thinking that the word ‘bone’ is funny?” I asked. “Never,” Clay responded.

The evidence of the next four days with the guys would support that conclusion. Our primary sources of amusement were not what you’d call high-concept humor: Folding Scott up into the sleep sofa. Letting trouser coughs fly in the gondola. Wilson asking a waitress, “Have you ever been to Subway?” after which he planned to sing a song that Clay has come to detest, “Clay Henry, Clay Henry, he’s a fireman and a Jared fan, Clay Henry. Got real big on burgers and fries, now he’s down to a smaller size.” (She adeptly shot him down by claiming that she’d never been to Subway.)

Of course, juvenile behavior is certainly exacerbated by an absence of women, and the estrogen-free nature of this trip probably contributed to the simian level of social interaction. By my reckoning, girls begin to surpass boys in maturity at roughly age 3, and boys never catch up. But the presence of females does tend to elevate the overall maturity level, because, whether they admit it or not, guys care what girls think of them. Had there been any women with us, for instance, I’m sure our grocery list might’ve included something other than beer, Tostitos, salsa, mac ’n’ cheese, Entenmann’s breakfast pastries and the kind of juice beverage whose label says “Contains no actual juice.” Were there women around, we would’ve made sure we also picked up some carrot sticks or seven-grain bread or rice cakes. You know, responsible food.

Even on our own, however, there was evidence to contradict Clay’s assertion that we will maintain our current lifestyles—call it “Billy Madison without the money”—until we’re old and wizened. One day Doyle and I quit skiing at about 2pm so that we could devote more time to understanding Canadian culture by drinking Kokanees and watching snowmobile races on TV at a bar. We also ordered buffalo wings, the Canadian interpretation of which turned out to be emaciated little chicken bones slathered in K.C. Masterpiece barbecue sauce. After this savory fare, I was attempting to dislodge a stubborn chunk of poultry from my teeth with my fingernail (remember, again, that there were no women around) when Doyle began expounding upon the virtues of dental floss.

I’m a fan of dental floss myself, but Doyle, little did I know, is a floss fanatic. At his last teeth-cleaning, his dentist scared him by making him watch a video about gum disease that sounded more grotesque than any driver’s-ed highway carnage film yet produced. He went on to tell me how, if you don’t floss, “pockets” form in your gums, those pockets harbor bacteria, and then your teeth fall out and you end up living in a bell tower and saying “yeesss master” a lot. By the time he was done talking, the piece of chicken in my teeth may as well have been a wad of anthrax spores, and I was ready to jump over the bar and begin frantically flossing with the bartender’s ponytail.

What was even scarier than gum disease, though, was that we were sitting in a bar on vacation talking about gum disease. When did this become an issue? Shouldn’t we have been talking about who threw the sickest switch rodeo five tail-grab in the X Games? Or how wasted we were last night, dude? Or how many surfboards we fit inside a Honda Element while on our way to the bonfire to listen to techno music and vote for Democrats?

I suppose it doesn’t always follow that as life’s responsibilities mount, one’s sense of humor changes, but I hope that as conversations turn to rising tuition costs and mortgage rates, colonoscopies and cholesterol levels, there’ll still be a place for putting on a mullet wig and a Dicken’s Cider T-shirt and folding someone up into the couch. I’ve got to set a good example for my kids.∂