Category — Random Acts of Thought

I posed the question recently to a friend, at what point did you officially feel like an adult?  Was it the first time you had a full-time job with a cubicle or an office?  Was it the first time that you paid all of your bills for the month and realized there was a mere 20 bucks left in your account?  Or was it closing on your first house and realizing you now have to work for the rest of your life in order to pay for mortgage and upkeep?

I guess for me it was after I had my first cube, and my first zero checking balance.  It was when I finally moved out of my mother’s home (at an embarrassingly late age) and realized that with my busy job, my boyfriend, my friends and my errands I had to make appointments with all of my family members in order to spend time with them.  We have all gotten so busy that to just talk on the phone for more than a minute and a half took planning with each other.  The worst part is when there are weeks in between seeing my family, I cant think of any particularly important things that I have been doing keeping me away.  There hasn’t been any catastrophe or emergency to come up - it’s just life that comes up.  A hell of a lot of silly things in life take up my free time.  It seems a very long time ago (maybe back to college) that I had free time. Sigh.

The night I turned 21 I went to a bar and danced my little heart out. At 1:00 am I realized I still hadn’t had my first legal drink so I ordered a sex on the beach. I finished that drink and went home that night sober and feeling good.
I have never been much of a drinker. Here are a few reasons… I have never enjoyed the taste of alcohol overly. I don’t appreciate feeling nauseous, dizzy, spins or the feeling of day-after-embarrassment. I am 26 now and I cannot go to a bar without getting flack from someone about not drinking. They always want a reason why, they hound me with offers of shots and they make me feel uncomfortable for being of sober. Then I always get questions as to why I am not drinking as if I must have some biological reason for sobriety because no person would actually choose that position. Here is a tip, if someone passes on the offer to drink or order a coke instead of a beer don’t bother saying anything. They probably are choosing not to drink because they don’t want to, not because they are waiting for someone to offer one. And if you are really that uncomfortable drinking alone maybe you should consider why you ordered and take a pass at the next round.

Apparently for women in there mid twenties the biological clock hasn’t started ticking yet. It is too early for a B-A-B-Y. The idea of it a head protruding from the vagina is still a little too much, but the clock has started winding up. We realize that our maternal instincts can no longer be denied and it is no longer appropriate or tolerated by our men to waste our maternal nature on them. They don’t want us constantly picking lint off their clothes, handing them a napkin when needed, and taking away that last drink when we think they’ve hit too many. They are starting to get annoyed. So what is the most logical next step… a puppy of course? An animal that needs almost as much attention as a child and is almost as cuddly. Like a big practice run for when the kids come. All my friends have one now.
Firstly they are expensive like kids. Nobody wants a mutt that they have lovingly adopted from the humane society. It has to be a purebred so that it is the prettiest puppy in the neighborhood and people can go gaga at the dog park (kind of like kids at the mall). Not to mention the vet bills. Whoa those add up.
Then it needs to be bathed like a kid. Puppies smell like ass if you don’t bathe them… kind of like a kid. And puppies need their crap cleaned up after them like a kid needs his poopie diaper changed.
And lets not forget the mounds of attention a puppy needs. They can’t be let alone as with a baby (pesky child services). They may eat a poisonous household item or gorge itself on food all at once then puke it up so it starves later (a baby could definitely try both of these things).
And lets not forget that a puppy, like a newborn baby, is a constant conversation piece. As boring as it is to hear a newborn mom go on and on about their breast feeding, diaper genies, and how their 6 month old can read the paper it is nothing compared to someone talking about their puppy. What its poop looks like, its favorite spot at the dog park, and which new tricks its learned (sitting is difficult for both a baby with a fragile, undeveloped backbone and an untrained, precocious, fairly stupid puppy).

Why is it that new mothers always refer to their babies post one-year old as “21-months old”  Why count out the number of months?  8 months old makes sense because the child is not yet a year and it designates the age up to the one year mark.  Makes sense because otherwise whether you had the baby the day before or five months before the child would always be referred to as “not yet a year old”.  It has a negative conotation.  Like the child is less important or remarkable if they haven’t broached the year mark yet.  But what if they are 21 months.  Why not just say “a year and 9 months”?  Or why refer to months at all. I am not 25 and 8 months today!  Nobody gives a shit if the kid hasn’t quite hit 2 yet… he is still 1.  Get used to it.  But doting mothers always have to have a  benchmark for everything.  I don’t know anything about child development so if your kid is 19 months vs. 22 months, really makes no difference.