Childhood was so simple.
Back in the day, people would ask you what you were going to be when you grew up. It was fun and exciting to answer. “I’m going to be a firefighter!” you’d say one day. Or, “an astronaut!” you’d say next. Or, “an elephant trainer!” And everyone would smile and nod and you would go on living your little delusional kindergarten life.
Then, one day, you realize you are four months away from “grown up” and you have no idea at all what you are going to be, or even what everyone means by “grown up.”
Well, “grown up” is kind of vague, isn’t it? Do you feel grown up? I certainly don’t. Which is kind of disturbing, seeing as I’m graduating in May and have an eight-month-old child for whom I am responsible.
But the average college student — 20 years old, fake-ID owner, frequenter of the Gap — seems to agree: “Grown up” is a state of mind, and we’re not there yet. How do you define “grown up,” anyway?
I used to think that “grown up” was when you turned 18. That is obviously a sham, though. Grown ups are able to buy alcohol. I know this much is true.
So is 21 the magical number? Maybe when you turn 21 you are grown up. However, there are reasons that 21 does not grant you entrance into the world of the grown up. For one, you still can’t rent a car, which is integral to traveling, which is something that grown-ups must be able to do. Also, grown-ups do not go out on their birthdays and get so completely trashed that they cannot walk themselves home.
Maybe “grown up” is when you are financially responsible for yourself. That seems wrong, though. Is “grown up” the kind of thing that can be boiled down to dollars and cents? When people asked what you would be when you grew up, I doubt financial security was the benchmark by which they measured “grown up.”
No, all these definitions can’t help with the concept of “grown up.” There is some inexpressible mental threshold that all must pass to enter that secret-est of lairs.
This makes graduating from college rather tricky. Generally, it is accepted that once you graduate from school, you will enter the workforce, pay for yourself and become a productive member of society — of grown-up society. Young-grown-up society? Of course. But grown-up.
What a crock. At the average age of 22, newly graduated college students are not grown-up. Almost all the graduates I know, while they do hold down jobs and pay their bills, are nowhere near that fabled grown-up status.
In fact, most graduates I know hook up with random people often and spend their puny budgets on barhopping every chance they get. The grads I know rent apartments and own furniture they found on Mifflin Street. The grads I know sleep till noon on weekends and gripe about work.
This is not grown-up behavior.
Grown-ups are supposed to be responsible. They are supposed to be in stable relationships that don’t involve random sex. They are supposed to have houses with nice furniture and dinners that aren’t in front of the television. Grown-ups are supposed to like their jobs.
This dichotomy between recent college grads and grown-ups makes me wonder: Is anyone ever really “grown-up”? I wonder how old most adults feel. I’d bet that it is nowhere near their actual biological age. Is anyone ever really ready for the responsibility of a job, a family or a mortgage? Or does life just happen and sweep the not-grown-up along in its wake, until, struggling to stay afloat, the not-grown-up has to paddle for dear life and leave his careless days to drown?
Maybe that’s a bit melodramatic. But it comes to me that no one is ever ready to grow up.
When adults would ask what you wanted to be when you “grew up,” they were searching for a lost piece of themselves — when their lives, too, were as simple as a decision to be an elephant trainer, or an astronaut, or a firefighter. As we grow older and are forced into the world of the rational, such fantasies become more difficult to hold on to.
You can’t stop yourself from becoming “grown up,” and the dream of a career in elephant training slips away. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying the circus.
Jamie Seiberlich ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism.