Real milestones for real people

20 May 2015 - 02:13 By ©The Daily Telegraph

Nothing adds pressure to growing up and growing old like the need to tick things off a list. Mention to a group of twenty-somethings that they're in danger of lagging behind the curve if they've yet to secure a solid job, get engaged and own a house, and the likelihood is that you'll turn them into a grotesque pastiche of a Friends episode.Which is why polite umbrage is taken with a recent study that claims to have determined the age by which you should have achieved 25 life-defining milestones. According to the study, in which 2000 people were canvassed, self-respecting adults should move out of the family home by the age of 22, get engaged by 25, have a child at 28 and move into their first house at 30.The study effectively hangs an albatross of expectation around the neck of Generation Y.Even more revealing is that the researchers think we should be retiring by the age of 60. 60! That's roughly halfway through the working life of today's university students.No, if we're going to talk about common milestones in life, we need to be a little more grounded in reality.And so here is an alternative list of the life-defining events that will almost certainly happen to you.Age 13: Boast about losing virginity;17: Secretly admit that your porn habit might be out of control;21: Actually lose virginity;24: Go through an extremely messy break-up and decide that you will never be happy again;25: Run a marathon in fancy dress;26: Flirt with facial hair, oblivious to the fact that the resulting photos will haunt you for decades;31: Start using fabric softener as well as washing powder;32: Spend an afternoon with the in-laws without drinking heavily;35: Yearn for the joy-filled, carefree days when you could go on holiday without children;36: Complain vociferously about music/fashion/films not being as good as they were in your day;37: Start plucking grey hairs;41: Experience your first three-day hangover and mistake it for a terminal illness;43: Wake up one morning convinced that you have completely wasted the first 43 years of your life;45: Accept that you will never be a published novelist;46: Develop an obsessive, all-consuming interest in military history;49: Realise you can no longer tell if the young woman at work is genuinely flirting or simply feels sorry for you;50: Become increasingly aware that you are, in fact, an incredibly angry driver;52: Stop plucking grey hairs;55: Yearn for the joy-filled, carefree days when you could go on holiday with children;57: Buy a completely inappropriate car that fills every other member of your family with crushing embarrassment;67: Realise you spend more time posting angry comments beneath online articles than you do speaking to real people;72: Become increasingly aware that you are, in fact, an incredibly dangerous driver;76: Contemplate giving up your full-time job as a delivery driver...

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