Life insurance. WHY?
Adults give a shit what other people think of them. Even if they say “I don’t care what other people think of me. It’s none of my business.” That’s a big fat lie.
Adulthood is hard. I was talking to my friend Brook this morning about her irritable bowel syndrome. We were commiserating on the fact that neither of our gastrointestinal tracts work like they should.
Then I realized that adulthood is one of the weirdest endeavors I’ve ever embarked upon. Nothing makes sense and we do things that are counterintuitive to our wants and desires.
Here are some things that adults do:
We keep food journals because we are certain that we have food allergies that are causing us to be moody and have irregular bowel movements. This is adulthood.
Adults call about life insurance in case we die one day and have to leave all that money to our children. Adults are excellent at worrying about other people. We forget to shower and brush our teeth because we worry about alternate-side-of-the-street parking and getting a ticket from the evil parking meter person.
Being a grown-up means you have to care a lot about money. If you do anything (like leave your house) and you become thirsty, you have to consider if you should buy something to drink or save that two dollars. Because if you spend that two dollars you might not have enough money to buy something else that you need, like gas for your car or a MetroCard if you live in New York City.
When you are a grown-ass person, you have to worry about other people’s feelings a lot. This is especially applicable when you work in a corporate office. Adulthood is particularly challenging if you are a direct person. You need to curb the urge to tell someone to “Go fuck yourself” and instead say, “I’ll keep that suggestion in mind.” This comes in handy when your boss gives you unsolicited advice.
Adults are concerned about being on time to things. Time matters a lot when you’re a grown-up. Unfortunately, if you are an adult who has children, your children don’t give a fuck about time. You will try to explain to them that being on time is valuable and important and they need to learn this skill to prepare themselves to be a successful adult. They will roll their eyes at you and continue to take their shoes off.
To be an excellent adult you have to be on time, because if you are late to things you will piss people off and probably lose your job. The expression “lose your job” is a funny one, because it’s not like you don’t know where your job went. You are aware of the fact that your boss doesn’t want you to come back to the job you once worked. It’s not lost. You simply have been told that you may not return to the job because you were fired.
Adults give a shit what other people think of them. Even if they say “I don’t care what other people think of me. It’s none of my business.” That’s a big fat lie. They care so much what other people think of them that they spend hours talking to a friend about another friend. Most adults are terrible at confrontation. They are excellent at a thing called passive aggressiveness. Even the grownups who are therapists. Those people are the best at being passive aggressive because it’s their job to be that way. They actually get paid $150 per hour to be subtle and try to get other adults to confront their own feelings directly, and cry. Usually cry.
Grown-ups spend a lot of time talking about eating healthy. But many of them drink soda when the others aren’t looking. Because a lot of adults are not good with this thing called “willpower.” In fact, from my adventures in Adult-Land, the people who talk about being healthy the most are one of two things 1. Miserable and hungry or 2. Secretly eating brownies when no one is looking.
Adulthood could be way more fun if we acted like children. Children don’t care about being on time or eating healthy. They don’t give a shit what other people think about them and they certainly don’t understand what passive aggressiveness is. They just say how they feel. This is why I am not a particularly good adult. I say things. See: foot, mouth.
Being a grown-up is not easy, but I think if we all commiserate about the silliness we have to endure, we’ll feel a lot better about wanting to be on time and have a savings account.
