20 People Who Accomplished More Than Me Before They Were 20

This cupcake symbolizes the defeat of teenage pregnancy

So this weekend I turned 20. The celebration was excellent, and the weekend was replete with friends, family, Lupe Fiasco, inexplicable football victories, a seemingly insurmountable stockpile of baked goods, and innumerable abuses of new Sherman Ave writers-to-be. But at some point during the frivolities, somewhere in between heinifying the Shakespeare Gardens and shouting Taylor Martinez-related obscenities on the El, I was struck by the realization that I had suddenly graduated from being merely a teenager into the vaunted world of the 20-something.

Now, I’d like to think that I fit into the 20-something club quite nicely. I publish self-indulgent blog posts, live in dire fear of missing a party, and am woefully unemployed. I vote Democrat and laugh at the word “clitoromegaly.” I buy records on vinyl, wear flannel, and spend an obscene proportion of my income at either BK or EV1, which suits me just fine. I fervently and irrationally believe that Steve Kerr was one of the most important guards in NBA history, and will be a drain on society in general for the next five years or so. Needless to say, I play a good deal of Sporcle and Civilization IV.

This 20-something is a Starbucks barista and staff writer for Thought Catalog

Besides being a great excuse to drink Andre and treat my friends as dutiful subjects to the Birthday Boy for a day, turning 20 is also a good milestone to size up the accomplishments and failures of my life. Even if I never played first base for the White Sox or fronted a touring rock n roll band, I’d like to think I’ve accomplished a fair deal, including roadtripping to LA and founding the most atrocious blog known to the greater Chicagoland area. But no matter what I’ve done, here are the 20 people who accomplished so much more than I could ever dream of before they were even able to legally drink in Japan.

1. Beyoncé’s Unborn Baby
That fetus was still only 5 months old when it garnered 8,868 tweets a minute at the MTV Music Video Awards. To be honest, the only time I can ever hope to gain that much recognition in social media is if Ross Packingham mentions me in one of his status updates. The progeny of Ms. Knowles and Mr. Z will almost certainly emerge from the womb with more talent, beauty, and hedge fund investments than five generations of Rees’ will be able to amass. If this kid doesn’t have a hit single by the time she’s 7, Amy Winehouse will turn over in her grave.

Jesus getting hammered, like a proper 20-something

2. Jesus
Although by the time he was 20 the God the Son incarnated hadn’t quite gotten around to teaching the word of God, performing miracles, or founding the Church, he was at least gainfully employed, which is much better than I can say for myself. You can rest assured that the Messiah was a really fucking good carpenter, as evidenced by his prominent position on Wikipedia’s “Notable Carpenters” list.

3. Harry Potter
Defeat He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? Check. Graduate school? Check. Bang a butterface ginger? Check. The kid did it all, which is even more impressive considering that he never once succumbed to the distraction of working alongside Emma Watson.

I'm going to grow up to do WHAT???

4. Michael Jackson
Despite being born in the eternal hellhole of Gary, Indiana, MJ quickly rose to prominence. At the age of eight, a time when I was mostly concerned about training my Bulbasaur and watching The Bachelor when my Mom wasn’t home, the kid was opening for stripteases with the Jackson 5. If the vocal talent wasn’t enough, he also sported the greatest afro any prepubescent boy ever possessed.

5. Koko the Gorilla
It took me nearly two years to master elementary Spanish, but this adorable ape mastered American Sign Language and English in a few short years. She also had a kitten, and apparently assaulted more women than Herman Cain, both of which prove her superiority to me.

Morty as a child

6. Morton “Morty” Owen Schapiro
The man could grow a full grown beard in first grade in the same time it took me to read a page of Good Night Moon. But for a more complete examination of his exploits in the early years of this man’s life, I suggest you reference Chloe Woodhouse’s expose on the legend himself.

7. Macaulay Culkin
This kid was uglier than what I imagine Steve Buscemi to have looked like as a child, and yet he was still fucking boss. Not only did he single-handedly defeat Joe Pesci in the highest grossing comedy of all time, he also got to live the life of the richest boy in the world as the son of the founder of Rich Industries. The icing on the cake: Mila Kunis.

She also accomplished scaring the living shit out of me as a child

8. Matilda
So smart she could develop telekinetic abilities with the unused part of her brain, she was able to defeat Miss Trunchbull and form a happy, loving family with Miss Honey all before graduating elementary school. Although I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive her for the nightmares I suffered after watching the chokey scene.

9. Willow Smith
This video has over 64 million views. The most popular video I ever starred in was of me doing the “Single Ladies” dance in my senior year econ class. Either there’s something wrong with America, or I just got my ass handed to me by a 10-year-old. Or both.

He also managed to get arrested before me.

10. Bill Gates
By the end of sophomore year, the nerd had set a record for the fastest algorithm produced in his Harvard combinatorics class that stood for 30 years. Then he founded Microsoft. By the end of my sophomore year, I intend to have decided upon a concentration and get Sherman Ave to generate enough revenue to pay for beer.

11. Jane Austen
The woman had written most of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice before she turned 20. Not that I really care about the morals, scandals, and marriages of the early 19th Century landed gentry of England, but I’d just about die if Colin Firth ever portrayed one of my characters. Just saying, he’d make a great Sir Edward Twattingworth III.

12. Peter the Great
Dude was 10 when he became Tsar. During his reign he transformed Russia from a freezing, backward, and destitute rural society into a 5,000,000-square-mile freezing, backward, and destitute society. All while suffering from epilepsy.

Despite a lack of physical presence, he still dominated in the paint.

13. Air Bud
That golden retriever probably scored more points in one season than I did in my entire rec league basketball career. Second only to Michael Jordan’s role in Space Jam for convincing kids that they were better than basketball than they actually were, the only downside of Air Bud was the experience of overwhelming disappointment when you own dog couldn’t drain a three-pointer.

14. Lindsay Lohan
Herbie: Fully Loaded aside, The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, and Mean Girls are some of the greatest acting performances I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’m pretty sure most guys my age have harbored a life-long crush on her ever since she valiantly challenged herself to a fencing match.

15. Michelangelo
Probably one of the best artists in Florence by the age of 14. No big deal.

16. Eliàn Gonzàlez
Not only did Gonzàlez cross from Cuba into American waters in an aluminum boat with a faulty motor, he also survived a sea storm while floating on nothing more than an inner tube. He also accomplished more in politics than any MTV Rock the Vote campaign ever has, quite possibly costing Al Gore the 2000 presidential election.

17. Madeline
The girl got her appendix removed and acted like it was no big deal. She also survived a fall off a bridge into the Seine River and ran away to join a group of traveling gypsies before she learned long division. That’s all there is; there isn’t any more.

18. Beethoven
Sure, as a child his father made young Ludwig stand at they keyboard until he cried. But it all worked out, right? He was seven at the time of his first public performance, and was publishing original compositions before most kids his age had mastered the art of five-paragraph essays.

Adorable

19 and 20 (tie). Eng Seng Ng and Cheng Yen Ng
Eng Seng Ng is a 19-year-old grad student at Stanford. Most people that age are busy playing National Treasure drinking games and sleeping through 11:00 am discussion sections, not completing their master’s in mechanical engineering at the top school in the country. Ng’s sister Chenny is just as amazing. The renowned master of the Hoedown Throwdown, Chenny is also an internationally-acclaimed practitioner of all things heinous, not to mention the most adorable member of Sherman Ave.

Honorable Mentions:
Adele, Kain Colter, Sasha Obama, George Harrison, LeBron James, Achilles, and Charlie Young.

Sherman Ave’s One Month Anniversary!

Unfortunately, stripper cake not included.

It is with immense satisfaction and joy that we announce the one month anniversary of the venerably estimable, nay TOTALLY KICKASS, website Sherman Ave! Ever since our first post (a review of the latest single from hip-hop duo Alpha Delta, which helped launch the group into international popularity) was first published around 5 in the morning on January 25th, it has been our proud duty and pleasure to provide our readers with only the highest quality of reporting on the culture and shenanigans of the Evanston and Chicagoland area. We thank you, our loyal readers, for making us who we are today: the 4th most reviled news source on campus.

In blog years, one month is approximately 18 human years. Therefore, we have decided to celebrate our one month anniversary in typical teenage fashion. First comes the traditional bickering with parents. In a display of our need to exert our own individualism and adolescent rage at our nurturing and well-intentioned parents, our relationship with North by Northwestern and The Daily Northwestern will slowly devolve into incessant shouting matches, until we eventually storm out and get a regrettable lower back tattoo after falling into the dangerous “blog crowd.” After our familial situation deteriorates, there won’t be anybody or anything stopping us from the self-destructive behavior most young blogs experience when first stepping out on their own.

Not that certain Sherman Ave editors can name all 195 countries thanks to sporcle, or anything...

The next step in our celebration of our one month anniversary is the common teenage phenomenon of dangerous abuse of alcohol and other drugs. After being peer-to-peer-pressured by the “cool” websites like Gawker or Facebook, we’ll try and distance ourselves from our once dear, but now hopelessly lame, website-friends like Sporcle or Stumbleupon by drinking obscene amounts of liquor. This will unfortunately lead to the alienation of many of our closest friends, including Her Campus after a particular poor attempt to hit on our secret blog crush, and maybe even the loss of our bloginity to the interweb tramp CollegeACB.

Where would this man be without us!?

Teenage angst asides, looking back on this past month, we feel that our humble blog has accomplished a hell of a lot. A positive write-up from our venerable website can do wonders for a career, and we’ve broke some of the hottest celebrities over the past month. Hip hop duo Alpha Delta never would have exploded onto the national scene without our glowing review, and it is doubtful that American pop culture ever would have experienced the impact of Kanye’s “All of the Lights” video without the attention it garnered on our humble pages. We have also transformed President Schapiro from a little-known college president to a dearly beloved demigod, all thanks to our extensive profile of the living legend himself.

But our influence extends much further than mere pop culture. We have fought endlessly against the repressive Evanston government, eventually ending the evil Brothel Law, decriminalizing bowling and skipping, and working endlessly to slowly return fun, happiness, and joy to the northern suburbs. Politically, we have covertly aided Rahm Emanuel’s miraculous election against all odds (although we can neither confirm nor deny suspicions that we are also the authors of the @MayorEmanuel twitter feed), toppled repressive governments throughout the Middle East (and American Midwest) with our flaming rhetoric, all but insured a Palin/Bachmann victory in 2012, and wielded more influence over the Willard Exec Board elections than a power-hungry and depraved CA exerts over innocent and amiable freshman.

What is most important to remember, however, is that for the past month, we have selflessly shared our profound wisdom and taste for the Chicago area, free of charge. We shudder to think of where we would be as a society had wearing tights as pants gone out of fashion, or if the term “Tagalongs” became the accepted name for the impeccably American “Peanut Butter Patty.” Without us, women might never have left the kitchen to edit Wikipedia, Americans would still remain woefully ignorant of the rising phenomenon of Wombinations, and nobody would know the extent of how freaking hilarious Chenny Ng is.

Prepare yourselves, and let Sherman Ave take you there

But there is still so much more left to do! As the hottest blog in the 60201 zipcode for a month running, we take our duty to our readers quite seriously. Expect to be inundated with even more killer satire, features, and reviews. We also intend to completely infiltrate ASG by next quarter, establish a secret society that practices voodoo sexual rites in the steam tunnels, and maybe even one day Stumbleupon ourselves during Econ lecture. These are high goals to set for ourselves, but after one month of raging success, we feel like now’s the time to ratchet up our game to the next level. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll even post regularly!? Only time will tell.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Valentine’s Day: Love is in the air… and so is depression and anxiety. Our culture has laid out roles for each of us to play on this holiday, depending on whether we are single or in a relationship. The trouble is, the script is about as satisfying as the ending of “Lost”. Let’s take a look:

THE SINGLE SQUAD

This holiday devours all possibility of love from my soul.

It seems like there are two options here: sinking into a pit of misery, or deciding that V-day means losing your V-card. Option A assumes that Valentine’s Day is an irreversible signal of your impending fate to die unloved and alone. Every show of affection on this day is an intentional stab-wound to a heart that shrivels away minute by minute. In fact, going out today and witnessing it all would be just plain masochistic. Outside world, you had your chance. To the Nutella jar it is.