Eternal Reward Growth Chart

"All the world is a stage, but you'll grow out of it eventually" - Evan Hunt

A co-worker had 60 guests over for her kid's fourth birthday. "This'll be the last big party for him" she said. "Next year, he can invite a few friends over." No longer a gurgling apolitical fountain of silent-movie charm, the aging tot will have to fend for itself in the social arena from now on. Turns out, see, that the birthday party wasn't for the kid after all; it only happened for the parents' weird amusement. Come to think of it, the kid itself only happened for the parents' weird amusement, and the annual coronation parties offered in celebration of the adults' virility wore thin when the adventurous toddler developed the ability to walk while urinating. Perhaps it grows harder for a parent to view a child as an investment in immortality when the adults spend minutes every day suppressing the urge to strangle their own offspring.

We are born; we live; we die. And to mark our place in this eternal cycle, our loved ones embalm our remains into polystyrene immortality, seal them in fireproof coffins, and bury them in the Earth, as if to say "Ha! Try and nourish the buds of the coming Spring with that!" Then they sadly discuss the eternal life which you've achieved in the next world. Then they go home.

When I was 24, my older sister introduced her child-bearing plans by asking me, "You know what step comes after marriage?" Unmarried, I offered my honest response. "Death?" I asked.

She hated me for weeks afterward but my slip demonstrates that, while the path of fear and confusion is a universal one, we each travel down these roads at different speeds, by different maps, and on different tires. Strange lands lay ahead, you will discover, and the only universal currency is condescending advice. It is for all of you, then, that I offer this chart, which gives a clear explanation of the three essential stages of delusion we pass through on the way to enlightenment and/or adulthood, whichever comes first.

You may argue that there are more than four essential stages of life...and, indeed, there are; and yet most people, you'll find, live long lives without growing past the "High School" stage. Look at this chart, then, as the map of a compromise between the lives of people who forage into frightening new territory, and the lives of wimps who stick with what they've gotten good at.

Note: the categories "High School" and "College" are here combined into one column. This is because many people experience sexuality and the angst of familial separation early in high school, while many others delay these experiences until well into college. It's also because high school and college are really the same thing; that's one of the things you learn in "Real Life". The main difference between high school and college is that if you sleep with your college teachers you can tell people about it.

The Vital Stages of Life

of the selections in each row,
try to achieve more than two before you die

no skipping

Copyright 2001 Betsy Shebang