grownup?!?
I heard on Gilmore Girls (a legit authority on many subjects, in my humble opinion) that the first sign of being a grownup is that you no longer use that word. “Adult” is the proper term, according to Amy Sherman-Palladino.
Regardless— I have a question for my generation. It’s the age-old cliche “When did we become grownups and how do we make it stop?” Yes, every generation asks the same thing of themselves with the same amount of wonderment and wry indignation. As we trade our allowances and curfews for morgages and workdays, we all go through the same process at some time or another.
Mine always happens at the same time. It’s the moment after I hit “send” on a work-related email, particularly one that includes phrases like “in our best interest” or “working around the deadline” or “due to budget constraints”. What?? Am I seriously writing these words? On a daily basis? Do I sometimes say “no” to people twice my age? Yup. Do I “collaborate” with coworkers to make things appear functional and pretty in order to please “the powers that be”? Yup. Weird. Who on earth put me in charge of anything? Surely they must have figured out that I’m just a kid and I’m far too young to use all these terms and be taken seriously. Yet everyone seems to be going along with it. I feel like I’ve pulled off some sort of great trickery. I wonder if they’ll ever figure it out.
