While walking Savannah today I passed some teens engaged in a serious conversation. One said confidently to the other, “You become an adult when you turn eighteen.”

I nearly laughed. I just met someone who is not an adult yet in spite of having divorced after 27 years of marriage—which even with my sketchy math makes him more than eighteen. The divorce is not his fault.

The divorce is his girlfriend’s fault. She talked him into leaving his wife and then dumped him.

Being broke is not his fault. The divorce that is not his fault pushed him into gambling. He lost everything that remained after the divorce.

Having to walk everywhere on a bum knee is not his fault. Pressure from the gambling debt that is not his fault caused him to start drinking. He drove drunk and wiped out his car—which resulted in his aforementioned bum knee.

The bum knee isn’t his fault. The surgeon messed up the surgery. The bum knee is not his fault because the surgeon caused it. The injury from the drunk driving accident is not his fault because it was the result of the pressure from his gambling debt. The gambling debt is not his fault because it resulted from the divorce. The divorce is not his fault—in spite of his infidelity—because his girlfriend caused it.

Because he is broke—which isn’t his fault because he lost everything in the divorce that isn’t his fault and from the gambling that isn’t his fault—he lives in what he says is an uncomfortable house. That is the fault of the government for not engaging fully in socialism.

Wishing those kids in the skateboard park who believe they will magically become adult at age eighteen all the best.

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