All of the Ways I’ve Failed at Adulthood (But Succeeded at Not Dying Inside)
The next time we hung out, he said, “I bought a couch. I feel so adult.” Then we and my other friend talked about the couches we bought this year. This progressed, as these conversations often do among thirty-something-year-olds, into a conversation about just how impressively “adult” we’ve all become. I said, “These days, I spend more money on comfy pillows than beer!” and my friend said, “Yeah, and I drink smoothies now. Not with fruit and sugar either, with veggies.” We continued on like this, patting ourselves on the back until my partner, bored with the conversation, brushed her finger over my ear. Thinking she wanted a kiss, I turned, and she said, “You really need to wash behind your ears.”
My friends both looked away. I noticed one of them scratching absently at a shirt stain, the other hunched over their phone to scroll Instagram until the moment passed. I thought, wait — are we fooling ourselves? To double check, I decided to try and catalog all of my thoughts and habits that might disqualify me from being an adult. Socks, according to my still-child-brain, have a unique feature. Once they’ve sat at the bottom of a laundry hamper long enough, they clean themselves. They are the cats of the clothing world. You can wear them again, and again, and again. Yes, I live alone, why do you ask?
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