the Only Move I Could Have Made

orrendous and absurd living situations beleaguered me throughout most of my college life. I cohabited with seven guys in a Fight Club-esque dilapidated hovel, where the living room smelled like bad quiche and the filthy toilets contained enough bacteria to launch another plague. I lived with two Chinese grad students, who left rotting fish carcasses and thawing eel strips on the counter on a daily basis. And while I greet recollections of these situations with a smile and an aneurysm, nothing is as unbearable and soul sucking as living with my parents post four years of college.

Three years ago, many of my graduating friends went on to some sort of job that kept them from moving home. Except my buddy Jake, now 27-years-old, still living with his parents. Sitcoms have taught me that older people living at home should be treated like socially stilted, mutant freaks, and while I used to ridicule him unrelentingly over the phone every time we spoke, I have recently joined his subculture of post-graduate hell.

My reasons are different from his. I have no money and want to save up, so I can become a broke artistic cliché in New York City. He, on the other hand, has never paid a rent bill in his life and is thus afraid of having to live where some of his money might actually go towards living expenses rather than payments on his new mustang or <insert chic new in-flight magazine gadget here>.

While I’m dodging a real job and he’s dodging the real world, there are people going home in increasing numbers with each passing graduation date. Is it the economy or is it just that our generation is full of slothful, ambitionless children afraid to grow up? Going by society’s standards, we are probably the latter.