"Act your age." Remember hearing that? Repeated over and over during 
the later years of your childhood, along with "Act like an adult" and
the ubiquitous "Grow up!" All of this was assumedly in preparation for 
thrusting you into an adult society. But what of this "adult society"?

It seems that here in the States, companies make it their business to 
treat you like a child. Grocers check your eggs, assuming you haven't; 
coffee cups have "Warning! HOT!!!!" printed all over them, as if hot 
coffee was not the very thing you ordered; you have cars that turn off 
the lights for you if you leave them on, just in case your thoughts 
while driving were on anything but driving.

"Those are just the little things", one might be tempted to point out. 
It's nice to not have to worry about buying broken eggs by mistake, or 
about taking a sip of scalding coffee because you were in a hurry and 
forgot to let it cool down, or about having to call a tow-truck in the 
rain because you left your lights on at the park-and-ride.

Does it end there? Not in the slightest. Acting in the perceived best 
interest of the public is the role of the government; and acting in the 
perceived best interest of the audience is the role of tha mass media.  
Yet the perceived best interest is not always --and in fact rarely is-- 
the interest expressed by the public or audience itself. Thus you have 
a mass-media Presidential Impeachment Crusade waged over an event that 
the majority of the public, when polled, expresses little or no concern 
over. You have laws that penalize you for not wearing a helmet or a 
seatbelt. You have the adult version of storybook language primers in 
the "for dummies/morons/complete idiots" series which offer to present 
information which you might otherwise feel was too complex for you. You 
have magazines and television shows telling you what films are worth 
watching, what books are worth reading, what current events you should be 
concerned about. All of which, of course, carries with it the implicit 
assumptions that you cannot make these decisions yourself.

What are the roots of this rather presumptuous nurturing? It is rather 
difficult to say. Obviously the frivolous --or merely trifling-- 
lawsuits have something to do with it; when a woman can sue a corporation 
the size of McDonald's for serving her hot coffee that she later spilled 
on herself while driving, and WIN...that is a sign that all is not well 
in society.

Or perhaps the roots run a little deeper. After all, such lawsuits are 
based on actual events: in the previous illustration, the woman did, in 
fact, drink coffee while driving, something one tends to do only after 
assuring that the coffee can in no way possible spill. People leave their 
seatbelts off or their lights on, and end up facing hospitalization or 
--worse-- inconvenience.

Is it possible that we as a society are not preparing people for the 
adult world? Are we not, in fact, teaching them to "act their age", but 
just telling them to? Does the increasing number of children, both young 
and adult, walking the streets have anything to do with the over-protective 
impulse?

Perhaps it does. For, as the young do, when things go wrong these children 
will seek to place the blame anywhere but on themselves--for the sense of 
responsibility is an adult virtue.  And in our present society, where blame 
is decided by jury rather than by fact, that blame is easily shifted to 
another-- usually along with substantial financial penalties. The message 
to those in power, or those at all liable, becomes "watch out for my 
mistakes, or I'll sue!" Or, more in lines with the opener of this essay, 
"don't let me act my age -- 'cause I won't!"

And now society watches relentlessly over us lest we trip and scrape our 
knees. Big Brother?  More like Nagging Mother.