Told You So

I'm an adult.

This is not new information, but I do need to remind myself from time to time. I used to think that adulthood was about doing whatever I wanted. Probably most children think that way. I remember the day that Mom told me I no longer had a bedtime. At 12, I though I had arrived. I remember that night.

I remember having to get up the next morning.

So then, apparently adulthood was about making responsble choices, and probably some other big words that I still don't fully understand. That's what Mom told me. That's why she let me stay up late, why she stopped nagging me about cleaning my room (mistake, btw) and why from 8th grade on, I was responsible to do my own laundry and ironing. I had to learn about another big word: Consequences.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm glad my parents wanted me to be responsible. It just seemed like they had a rather grim outlook on responsibility.

"I know you think being an adult is going to be sooooo much fun, but you don't know how good you have it. This is the best time of your life. I would give anything to be your age again."

I never quite bought that line. There was something else. Something about the fact that I could smell popcorn with butter coming from the living room about half an hour after bedtime. This was a time and place somehow forbidden to me. It was the same reason I couldn't sleep with Mom and Dad every time after I had a nightmare.

It was Dad's laugh too. The one he saved for the Tonight Show. He never laughed like that for the movies we watched with him. Jon and I would often sneak out down the long, dark hallway, careful not to step on any of the boards that creaked. Crouched on the stairwell, just out of sight, we couldn't see. We could only listen. I couldn't understand anything that Jay Leno was saying, I had come for the laugh. That distant call from a world that I could never know until the day that the title was magically bestowed on me.

Adult.

I wanted it so bad, and they were just being selfish. They told me that they needed time to be alone.

For what?

I want to play too.

"When you're older, you'll feel differently. It's just hormones."

It occured to me a while ago that I'm an adult, but something else occured to me that I didn't expect. It's something that 5-year old me stubbornly clung to, and swore the most sacred of oaths that he would hold to forever.

I was right.

Responsibility is just another word for freedom, and they tried to change my mind. My professors, family members, sunday school teachers, classmates, lab partners, bosses, supervisors, camp counselors, and even my subconscious, and the ways it was offended by all the things I would become, with or without my permission.

And those bastards didn't get me.

I had to grow up just to prove them wrong. I still feel the same way, and it is just as valid as it was when I was 5. I still like Batman comic books and cartoons. My room is still a mess, and I'm still a pretty damn good drawer.

I can say damn too. Nothing explodes. I checked.

So this is adulthood. It's what I've always been, plus those other cool things that I can see and use and know about.

Savings account
Sex
Parenthood
Paycheck
Facial hair
"R" for disturbing images
90 proof
Surgeon General's warning:
License

And perhaps I will make some really big mistakes with these things, but they are completely mine, and I am allowed to make them.

I was right all along.

I grew up just to prove you wrong.