i have a ridiculous hard on for becoming an adult

I’m not sure what happened, or when the desire overtook me, but I want to be just as old in my possessions and attendance and attitudes as I am in some of the issues we all face.

Kim and I have been discussing how each of us is clearly bordering on fogieness. Me, in my ability to fall asleep at 8 p.m., not only on school nights; she in that she drives 30 miles to go out only five nights rather than the full seven that God allotted her. In a fogieness strong arm contest held after a hearty blue plate special, I am quite sure I could rip her arm right off, given that I am not a homeowner and mother animals that don’t poop outside in the Nature. Take that, young buck.

I don’t want to give up spending eight hours on a Sunday playing softball and doing jager bombs and having photos taken of my backside while I’m dancing, but I very much would like to balance that lifestyle out somewhat. You see, I’m starting to feel like my plate runneth over with starch. Every day is something akin to French fries and Corn Pops and potato rolls and cocktails of yams and maple syrup and sticky rice sprinkled with bread crumbs. Life feels thick and like it might start to stick around the rim of the jar.

I’ve started to look at catalogues full of contemporary sofas and tulle and damask dinnerware and the perfect blue vase I might put in a study someday. I seek in the City Paper the Bodies exhibit and anything on blues and I look at expensive cheeses and wines with that feeling of longing. The other day I caught myself telling my mother that I liked a certain flatware set, a statement I am quite sure she recorded in her diary immediately upon returning home, on that page reserved for reassurances such as “the children are not gay” and “they won’t die alone.”

If I’m old enough to lose a job, should I not have a house to come home to, a $150 cropped linen jacket to drop in the foyer, a Kate Spade to toss on the windowsill along with my keys*? Without exception, should each and every bra not cost more than my corner store wine, my fridge contain some fresh herbs and filet, my cat litter be bought somewhere other than CVS?

I’m missing something.

Because although I don’t necessarily try to keep up with Joneses, every time I see them on Dateline after killing a spouse or on that tarted-up and dumbed down CBS Evening News with their ADHD child or on my drive home** I can’t help but notice the decided divide between us.

Meet couple A, a late 20-something and frankly quite dumpy LL Bean couple I caught eyeing homes in my neighborhood on Sunday (see full paragraph three for what this 30-something was on her way to do when she passed them). Not a home is snatched up in this area, even by those pesky squatters, for less than $650,000. And there these two were, young pups with probably no more than a decade of work experience between them, deciding in just which of these row homes they would lay their Burberry hats and eventually their sickening double running stroller. Adults, they were.

I pay both federal and DC taxes, mister, I know how to make pasta from scratch and never lose the cork to the bottle. I own my own silver and within my lifetime may actually polish it.

But I still sleep on the couch at least twice a week and only wear cute bed clothes slightly more often than that. I hardly ever exfoliate, and when I do, the liquids and gels are from Target. My largest check is written once every 30 days, just before I rip off that month’s calendar, for a purchase that I will never truly own. My living room furniture has survived three boyfriends and a flood. And there are moments, and sometimes days, when I contemplate picking up an Easy Bake Oven not only for the kitsch factor, but because those light bulb-baked desserts would probably taste pretty good. Come to think of it, those miniature cakes would sure be cute at a dinner party.