The Young and the Wasteless

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO: The Pauper Kills Her First

Adulthood.  It's a right of passage.  We go from babies to toddlers to children to adolescents to... adults.  The first four earmarks of our lives are simple.  You learn to walk and talk, you exit babyhood and enter your toddler years.  You enter the memory phase of life, you become a child.  You start to grow hair in weird places and believe you are the center of the world, welcome to adolescence.  But what demarcates adulthood?

At 18, you are no longer a minor.  The adults in your life can no longer control your decisions... in the eyes of the government.  But can anyone really look back at an 18-year-old version of themselves and call themselves adult?  At 18 I still relied solely on my parents for support and the most adult things I did were getting my cartilage pierced (healed into a small bump on my ear 6 months later) and buying a peach flavored cigar that I smoked on the hood of my car with Kelsey Painter in the park across from my development.  Oh, and giddily walking into a sex shop with Amy Tolbert in Georgetown.

LOL.  We are so old.

So then what?  Buying my first legal drink at Hahn Liquors on Devon a quarter past midnight on my 21st birthday?  If I'm old enough to go out to Wrigleyville and throw up in a trash can inside a bar I'm legally allowed to be in, does that make me an adult?

I can taste my 401k.

Once that glitz and glamor superseded me, I began to search for new rites of passage into adulthood.  Losing my virginity (yes, it happened after my 21st.  Get over it.)  Cooking meals outside of buttered pasta or grilled cheese (look guys, CHICKEN!)  Making my bed every morning before work (that lasted about 2 weeks.)  Having a job that gave me health insurance (huzzah for an HMO that I never used for fear of venturing into China Town alone when I had strep throat.)

As a nearly 27-year-old waitress renting an apartment who looks at friends who now have homes, marriages, and children, I constantly find myself quipping, "Look at you.  Your such an adult."  So when does my adulthood kick in?

In literature, rites of passage into adulthood range from getting your monthly fertile reminder to killing your first prey (in more dystopian societies.  Or in the Ozarks.)  So if I've never felt like an adult because of our society's visions of legal purchases and car rental capabilities, then how do I know?

My parents' generation was much in the mindset of finding a good job to support a family.  Mostly because it was infinitely possible to skip college, get an entry-level position at a company, and work your way into a career.  In our age, finishing grad school doesn't even secure you a position in the mailroom.  So many of us put off the family goals as we meander aimlessly through life trying to find that Tetris piece that slots us into the next level.

In lieu of the ages, I believe adulthood sets in the moment you realize what you need to do to make yourself happy.  This is why so many movies about arrested development have become so popular.  We are the generation lost.  With vices and distractions lurking around every aspect of the Internet, we rely on these senses of happiness to lull us into the idea that we are living life the way it's meant to be led.  We drink because we'd be social outcasts if we didn't.  We hang out with friends instead of working on our goals because we don't want to be left out.  We search for love because we think we are the only ones without it.

Essentially, we become adults when we realize it's time to grow up.  And no amount of homemade sesame chicken dishes with a side of potatoes au gratin will trick us into believing otherwise.

For long.