Checks

Note: Footnotes are the little numbers that will appear throughout the text. Sorry they're not superscripts...blogger wouldn't let me.

Life is funny. As you get older, you gain more responsibilities. (That’s not the funny part, I promise). However, for most people (or at least for me), paying rent, working a job, etc does not make you say “Oh no…I’m an ADULT!” Instead it’s the little things that happen.

I met up with my best friend from middle school the other day; it was the first time in six years since we last saw each other. She has a kid now so we went to the park to play on the playground. Sage, my friend’s daughter, is trying to play with the other, older kids. Looking at them, I realize that not a single tot would have been born in the 90s. That’s reality check number 1. Then we made a fatal error and listened in on some of their conversations.1 It was two girls and someone’s younger brother, squatting beneath the big slide, talking discreetly.2 They each had boyfriends (both lads were unaware that they were in a relationship with a girl) and then started talking of Jake and other boys. Everyone knows a Jake; the boy that the teachers like, the one who is friends with all the boys and the crushee of every girl. 3 My friend and I crack up laughing. For us it just felt like yesterday we were doing the same thing. Though it had seem so difficult, so drama-filled, life really was easy back then.4 Think about it. All you had to do was tell a Jake that he’s your boyfriend and Ta Da! you had a boyfriend. The teachers’ idea of an assignment was gluing macaronie to cardboard to make a photo frame. And all you needed to be the cool kid was Crayola’s 64 pack. Anyway, listening to the conversation was reality check numero dos.

And then it happened.

Sage had attached herself to a boy about four years older than her. He didn’t think she would be able to keep up but she totally proved him wrong…until finally he found something she wouldn’t be able to reach. She tried but without success. It was then that he said the horrific words: “Haha, you’d need an adult to reach that!” I look at my friend and she looks at me. We were these “adults” that he spoke of. There is no way I can fool myself into thinking I’m still a kid now.

You see, though I am 20-years old and though I have way more responsibilities than desired, I never felt like what this boy called an “adult.”5 Growing up had never scared me…until now. In less than two years I’ll have a B.S. degree in Psych and will be completely financially independent. Then there’s the fact that three of my friends now have kids and many more are engaged to be married. When did I get to be old enough to be married?6 At this point, my future is quite uncertain. I don’t know what I’ll be doing after Pitt. I’m clueless on which grad school is best for me…or even if I want to go. And I haven’t the faintest idea of who I’ll end up with or when. Yeah all of this can get overwhelming sometimes but I’m very much a “see where the wind takes me” type girl and am confident that I’ll end up where I’m supposed to be.

But that doesn’t change the fact that some days I’m scared shitless.


“I’m looking at the vast emptiness that is my future.” Casey Cartright, Greek
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1Don’t give me that look! Have you ever been around kids? They talk loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.

2Or trying to. See above footnote.

3My Jake in elementary school was actually a Logan. Just throwing that out there…

4 Not that we’d ever admit that to our parents. They’re not allowed to be right.

5 It probably doesn’t help that most people mistake me for a 17-year old. (18 on a good day).

6 Another thing we don’t like to admit to our parents- time does go by fast.