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Mar. 27th, 2002
sad, isn't it.
keeping dinner in the oven for Godot
Mar. 27th, 2002 10:40 pmWhen do I get to feel like a grownup?
I have a kid, I have a job, I pay rent and I'm current on my credit cards. I get on the train and go to work and I order seeds for the spring planting and we have bulk supplies in the chest freezer in the garage. I volunteer to help with the PTA. I book birthday parties for the kid. I know what wine to order with anything I'm likely to eat and where the cheapest lactase pills are and what size the kid is going to wear a season ahead, so I can hit offseason sales and buy overstocks from Lands End.
Also I'm pushing forty.
I don't feel much like a grownup, though. I don't know if that's bad, necessarily - a biggish chunk of the trouble in the world (it seems to me) comes from people trying to prove that noone is the boss of them. I try not to let on to the kid, although I'm pretty sure she's figured it out. She thinks I'm doing a pretty good job, so we keep it to ourselves. Still, I can tell she wonders how we ever got anything done before she got old enough to tell us what to do.
She's funny - all the authority in the family seems to have skipped a generation. I can get her to mind if I have to (we usually operate on a rough consensus, so there's not as much bossing as you might think), but she can get practically everyone to fall into line with no noticeable effort at all. I don't think she's going to have any trouble feeling like a grownup.
I watch people on the subway on the way to work and there's an astonishing amount of brinksmanship going on. Some of the people look as if they lost yesterday and they're going to lose today and probably tomorrow too, if they bother to separate their losses into individual days any more. They swagger just a little too close to the people around them or they walk a little slower than the rest of the crowd in the passages, hoping that someone will try and reclaim their space or pass on the escalator and give them an excuse to start something they might be able to win.
I think they think they're controlling their worlds.
I don't know if I ever will feel like a grownup. I hope the kid will have a less jaundiced view, but I don't see trying to be responsible and take care of people and taking control of your life as grownup acts. I see adulthood as a muddy pond full of cranky frogs bloating their throats at each other in hopes that they can intimidate their way to the best bugs. I don't want it. I dress (sometimes act) like a rebellious high school student trying to avoid it.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure exactly what I did before she got here either.
I have a kid, I have a job, I pay rent and I'm current on my credit cards. I get on the train and go to work and I order seeds for the spring planting and we have bulk supplies in the chest freezer in the garage. I volunteer to help with the PTA. I book birthday parties for the kid. I know what wine to order with anything I'm likely to eat and where the cheapest lactase pills are and what size the kid is going to wear a season ahead, so I can hit offseason sales and buy overstocks from Lands End.
Also I'm pushing forty.
I don't feel much like a grownup, though. I don't know if that's bad, necessarily - a biggish chunk of the trouble in the world (it seems to me) comes from people trying to prove that noone is the boss of them. I try not to let on to the kid, although I'm pretty sure she's figured it out. She thinks I'm doing a pretty good job, so we keep it to ourselves. Still, I can tell she wonders how we ever got anything done before she got old enough to tell us what to do.
She's funny - all the authority in the family seems to have skipped a generation. I can get her to mind if I have to (we usually operate on a rough consensus, so there's not as much bossing as you might think), but she can get practically everyone to fall into line with no noticeable effort at all. I don't think she's going to have any trouble feeling like a grownup.
I watch people on the subway on the way to work and there's an astonishing amount of brinksmanship going on. Some of the people look as if they lost yesterday and they're going to lose today and probably tomorrow too, if they bother to separate their losses into individual days any more. They swagger just a little too close to the people around them or they walk a little slower than the rest of the crowd in the passages, hoping that someone will try and reclaim their space or pass on the escalator and give them an excuse to start something they might be able to win.
I think they think they're controlling their worlds.
I don't know if I ever will feel like a grownup. I hope the kid will have a less jaundiced view, but I don't see trying to be responsible and take care of people and taking control of your life as grownup acts. I see adulthood as a muddy pond full of cranky frogs bloating their throats at each other in hopes that they can intimidate their way to the best bugs. I don't want it. I dress (sometimes act) like a rebellious high school student trying to avoid it.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure exactly what I did before she got here either.