Kids, Adults, and In Between

Whenever I start writing after midnight, I usually end up pulling an unintentional all-nighter, which pretty much wipes me out for the following day. Tonight I wasted a perfectly good night of sleep to write a long blog entry. A blog entry. I should be working on my "real" writing. Sigh.

I don't know if I've addressed this here, but I've talked about it recently with friends....

When I was a kid, I used to look at adults and think that they really had it together. I thought that on some distant and unfathomable morning I would wake up and somehow be secure in the knowledge that I was an adult.

But that's not really how it seems to be working out. Sometimes I feel like a grown-up, and sometimes I feel totally unprepared. Maybe once I have an income again, I'll feel more mature. Sometimes I just need to dress the part to feel it. Maybe a lot of being an adult has to do with feeling like an adult. Not that you can't still be young at heart.

It's crazy how everything is relative. I remember being in kindergarten and seeing the sixth graders and thinking that they were big, tall adults who could squish me under their feet. Now I see sixth graders and think that they are...well, twelve years old.

By a similar token, I will occasionally see a really hot guy and find out that he's in high school...like, 5 years younger than me...and feel like a total perv. Because I mistook a teen for an adult.

It's also funny to think about age gaps between couples. If I am 21 and date a 27-year-old, that's acceptable. But when he was 21 I was (I can't do math)...15-ish...that would have been a scandal. Or if a man marries a woman the same age as his daughter or something...we don't really want to start thinking about that math.

When I was 18, I went on a date with a 30-year-old, and my funny friend, Mike, made a huge list of "when he was doing this, you were doing that" to illustrate the age difference. We figured out that my date could theoretically have been my elementary school teacher. So to all you elementary school teachers, keep an eye out for potential future dates/spouses/f-buddies. It's a waiting game, for sure.