Who Are You Calling an Adult?

Photo by Denise Medve Penguin Moon Studios 

I need a tee shirt that says Bad at Adulting. That I have a basically grown child astounds me. That said child is a functioning human being currently not eating Tide Pods gives me hope that perhaps I am not utterly hopeless as a grown up, but deep in my heart I know I peaked maturity wise at about fourteen. Which is entirely appropriate because my friend Rick insists that I’m a fourteen year old gay boy at heart.

It struck me last summer when Spouse and I were driving through the Berkshires in our volvo listening to NPR and stopping at a farm to table market for organic free trade chocolate that not only did the world see me as an adult but as “THAT” kind of adult. Really I’m more likely to be driving said Volvo just a wee bit too fast with the windows down and the music blasting (yes, even in the dead of an East Coast winter, that is after all, why God made seat warmers).

I don’t understand how my mortgage works, cocktail chatter about interest rates, private school tuition and European vacations makes my eyes glaze over, and I can’t insist Spawn keep his room clean when mine contains a pile of clothing that dwarfs me, Spouse and all the felines put together in height and girth. My role model will forever be Auntie Mame, audacity combined with a great wardrobe. I take great pride in being the “fun” aunt, allowing my nephew to paint his fingernails green and giving my ten year old niece a makeover complete with a smoky eye.

My latent immaturity has its advantages. It means that I refuse to believe there’s a point where I have to give it up put on the sensible shoes and get on with growing old. That point where I stay home and yell at Television news (okay, I kind of do that, but it’s only an occaisional diversion, not my reason for being) and talk about how great things used to be. I still believe in taking risks and trying new things. That success is possible at any point and that there’s not a cut-off age on following your dreams. To quote my role model, life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death . I intend to eat my fill.