Why I will never, absolutely ever be an adult

I’m starting to wonder if I’m ever actually going to grow up.

I always thought it would be an automatic thing – something definite and biological, like puberty. That at some point an internal alarm clock would go off and my brain would just magically know to make the switch to adulthood. And one morning I would just wake up, swing my feet off the bed, and walk out into the world as a bona fide grown-up. I would develop a newfound interest in jazz and steel-cut oatmeal, and the phrase “fixed-rate mortgage” would suddenly make sense to me.

…But it hasn’t happened yet. And I’m 24.

…And, worse, in five months I’ll be 25. I’m no mathematician, but if we’re playing the rounding game, 25 rounds up to 30.

So based on really real, actual mathematic calculations… I’m basically 30.

I didn’t make this up, okay? It’s math. Look it up.

I think we can all agree here that 30 is an age when maturity is pretty generally expected of you. The rule actually says: If your age is in the double-digits, and the first digit is 3-and-up, you are an adult. Period. And that means you should also look, talk, and act the part – in other words, you should not be buying your groceries from 7-11, you should not be watching Spongebob at 3am, and you should not consider cold pizza part of a balanced breakfast. It says that. It’s in the rulebook.

And here I am, five months away from being basically-30, and I’m still tapping my toe waiting for adulthood to reveal itself to me. I look around at the other adults in the world – with their newspapers and their indoor plants and their clean cars – and I’m wondering if it might be time to face the music that maybe it just isn’t going to happen. My news will come from Twitter 90% of the time, I will never have the attention span to keep a plant alive, and – try as I might to deny it – my car floor will always be covered in cheez-its. It’s just a fact.

I mean, don’t get me wrong – I’ve come a long way in the past few years. I drink home-brewed coffee, I pay my taxes… I even own matching towel sets. But most of the time I feel like I’m just pretending to be an adult, and I highly doubt I’m fooling anyone.

There are just so many things that I do that a real adult wouldn’t do.

For example: There are times in my life (like when I build furniture or fly on an airplane by myself) when I find myself thinking, “Wow, this is really grown up right now. Look at me! I am so grown up.”

…But however “grown-up” the activity in question is, it is probably immediately negated by that thought designating it so. I just can’t imagine that many actual adults walk around thinking “I’m such an adult right now. This is so adult.”

That’s not all – The ‘maintenance required’ light has been on in my car since August. An adult wouldn’t do that. I have asthma (NERD ALERT!), but we better pray I don’t need my medicine anytime soon because my non-adult self can’t be bothered to schedule a doctor’s appointment to refill my prescription. As I type this, I am running a load of laundry (my first this month, notable in itself) and a few minutes ago the washing machine started making banging noises. When I heard the noise from my office, my VERY FIRST THOUGHT was that someone had broken into the house and I was going to die. Because my non-adult attention span couldn’t reach back in time 15 minutes to remind me that it was, in fact, my own actions that caused the noises.

Do you see what I mean?

I can only hope that maybe it’s just delayed, and my internal adulthood alarm clock could still be coming. But until then, you can find me watching Spongebob.

…And maybe googling “fixed-rate mortgage.”