Adulting
A Story about Growing Up
The eight of them sat around a small coffee table in Nate’s apartment. For the past three hours, they had enjoyed a makeshift brunch, complete with mimosas, coffee, eggs, and instant pancakes. Robin wore his pajamas, but the others were mostly fully-dressed. At least for two o’clock on a Saturday. Drew wore khakis and a button-up, but he always did, even at the beach.
Jeanie looked at the clock. “Shit,” she said, “it’s 2 already. I was going to clean my apartment, but I guess that’s not happening today.” She laughed.
Kryste stirred. “Anyone want more coffee?” she asked, “or alcohol?”
“I’ll take another marg’ if we’ve still got them,” said Tim.
“How ‘bout a cold brew?” joked Bella.
“You know I don’t have any cold brew,” said Nate.
“We could go out. There’s a Starbs two blocks away.”
“You’re so basic,” laughed Kelli, “who calls it Starbs?”
“So, one marg’ and everyone else is good?” asked Kryste.
“I think so. Not sure how much longer we’re planning to stay.”
“Anyone have any plans after this?”
There was a chorus of responses to the negative.
“Seriously, what if we go out? We can stop at Starbucks for Bella and her basic cold brew. Then I know a good brewery that just opened up last month. It’s got cider and wine and some limited mixed drinks for those of you that don’t drink beer.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“We never finished off the bacon.”
“Oh shit, yeah, you’re right.”
“And we’ve still got some eggs.”
“Yeah, let’s finish that stuff, Tim can have his marg’, looks like a few of you still need to finish your drinks, then we can start making moves to head out in maybe thirty minutes.”
“Sure.”
“Sounds good.”
“What are you guys doing tonight?”
“Tim and Ria and Becca and Cindi and I are meeting up for dinner at some Mediterranean place.”
“Haha, you mean Cava?”
“No, it’s not a chain.”
“Tell Tim and Cindi – and the others if they want – to join us at the brewery. What’s the name of the place?”
“Adulting.”
“What the shit, really? Adulting?”
“Haha, yeah.”
“Wow.”
“Boy they know how to stick it to us Gen Z weirdos.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I’m a Millennial.”
“Oh yeah, lord it over us, Jeanie, cause you’re the oldest one here, just because you were born in ’96. I think Millennials invented the word ‘adulting.’”
They laughed. Then there was a pause. Kryste brought back Tim’s margarita and a plate with three or four strips of bacon and some scraps of eggs. As she put it down, she said, with a strange expression on her face, “I heard the convo from the kitchen. Do any of you feel like you’re not adulting?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Meaning, do you feel like an adult?”
“Are you asking if we’re adults?”
“Yeah. Are you, are we, are any of us? You know, real adults?”
“Well, I don’t know about Tim.”
“I’m serious, Kelli.”
“No,” said Nate.
“Me either,” said Drew, “I don’t feel like an adult. I never have. Don’t know that any of us have. To be honest, I’m a Millennial, too, and I don’t know if most people our age feel like adults.”
“Wait, are you older than Jeanie?”
“My birthday’s in April.”
“Shoot, I was only born in September.”
“Wow, I guess Drew is older than Jeanie. How come you never told us?”
“I thought people knew. I’m still only 25.”
“Happy Birthday, then.”
“It was two months ago.”
“Happy late birthday, then.”
“To return to my original question…”
“Do we really have to talk about this?”
“Yes,” said Kryste, “I’m 24. We’re past the age where it’s cool to want to, like, stay in college forever and play pretend. We work real jobs. I go into work and I feel like a stranger, or an imposter, or something. I feel like a kid in grown-up clothes and I feel like everybody knows it and they just aren’t saying anything yet. It’s like when people look at me, I know they see right through me and they know I’m just a fake and I don’t really know what I’m doing. One of these days, someone is going to say something. I look in the mirror, and sometimes, for a moment, I look like a grown woman. And it makes me want to cry because I don’t know who that woman is. I don’t feel like her on the inside. I just want to feel like an adult sometimes. For five minutes. I just want to stop feeling like a kid in oversized shoes.”
“That sounds like imposter syndrome.”
“Maybe it is, but it’s still the case that I don’t want to be young forever… anymore.”
“I do. I’m happy to go on adulting. I don’t ever want to grow up. I’m never going to be a ‘real adult,’ and, TBH, I’m not sure why you’d want to, either.”
Tim emphasized the words “real adult,” by making air quotes with his fingers.
“So you’re still going to be going out on Thursday nights and getting your sex on Tindr when you’re 60?” asked Bella.
“First, I don’t even know what we’ll be using for hookups in 36 years, but it sure as hell won’t be Tindr. Maybe we’ll all be in the simulation by then. All I know is I don’t want to be around then. I’ll probably be dead.”
“Well, that may be good for you, but some of us want to actually get married and have a family someday.”
“Suit yourself,” said Tim, draining the last of his drink.
“I’m pretty sure nobody ever feels like an adult,” said Kelli, “most people’s parents don’t, I think. Most grown-ups don’t feel like grown-ups on the inside. Nobody really knows what they’re doing. Everyone just plays pretend and some people are better than others.”
“Do you think people do that for their whole lives? Or at some point they really do know what they’re doing? And maybe even feel like adults?”
“I think a lot of people don’t ever feel like adults.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think it’s always been like that?”
“Probably.”
“Maybe that’s why things are so F’ed up,” snorted Nate, saying the letter instead of the actual word.
“But it doesn’t make sense that it could always be like that,” responded Drew.
“Why not? Don’t you see what a mess the world is?”
“I mean going back to evolutionary times, human beings couldn’t all be a species of grown-up kids.”
“Why not?” asked Kelli.
“Because we wouldn’t have survived. How could any species survive whose members never knew what they were doing? How could any species survive that didn’t ever mature? How could humans have left the jungle if they didn’t pass on some sort of knowledge to their children?”
“I don’t know.”
“It just doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective that we would be here talking about this if homo sapiens had always been just a bunch of overgrown babies pretending to be adults. Or kids in adults skin making things up as they went along.”
Kelli had no response to this.
“Do you think it’s a more recent phenomenon?” asked Bella
“I guess,” said Drew.
“Why would it be recent?”
“I don’t know.”
“It wasn’t too recent. My parents sure never grew up,” said Tim.
“Tim, your parents are hippies.”
“So?”
“They do, like, LSD.”
“Psylocibin.”
“Same difference.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I think it’s been a more recent phenomenon,” said Nate, “my grandparents definitely grew up. They definitely weren’t pretending. My grandfather lost an eye in the Second World War and my grandma was in the WACs. Then she was a nurse. She saw more men die before she turned 20 than she could count. My other grandma worked in a factory making bombers during the war. After the war, they sure didn’t go back to being kids.”
“Things were different back then,” said Kelli, “our grandparents went through World War II and the Depression. My grandpa had to grow up by working two jobs at age 12 just to try to make sure his brothers and sisters could eat.”
“It shouldn’t have to take a war or a depression to make people grow up,” said Kelli.
“Maybe it doesn’t?”
“Can you prove that?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think that it does.”
“It’s a first world problem.”
“It’s definitely a first world problem.”
“Yeah.”
There was a silence.
“Does anyone know anyone – anyone our age – who is an adult? A real, quotation marks, adult, quotation marks?” asked Kryste.
“I know a woman who is,” said Jeanie. They all looked at her. She went on.
“One of my friends from high school’s older sister. She’s 28. 29 now, maybe. Anyhow, I didn’t know her all that well growing up, but when I moved out here, Rachel told me her sister was living in Denver and we should meet up. I got coffee with her once or twice before the pandemic. We actually became part of a pod during the pandemic, so I saw a lot of her – and the other five members of my pod. We played chess and pickleball and went hiking and stuff.
Anyway, this girl is a grown woman. She’s got it together. She knows where she’s going in life – she’s already a vice president at her company and she’s engaged to be married. They’re planning to have kids in a few years and she put a down payment on a house already with her fiancé.”
“I don’t think adulthood just means marriage and kids and a house and a corporate job,” interjected Kelli.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Jeanie, “This woman, she has all that stuff. But that’s just secondary. There’s something about her. A kind of confidence. It’s the way she carries herself or something.”
“Maybe she’s just really good at faking it,” interjected Kelli again.
“I don’t think so.”
But Jeanie fell silent for a moment, wrestling with what it was about this woman that she could not grasp but that made her a grown woman. For a brief moment, she almost thought to herself that if perhaps she could grasp what it was, she would be much further along to becoming a grown woman herself.
“By 29, you’ve learned a bit more about how to fake it,” continued Katie, “how about someone younger?”
“One of my best friends from college,” said Robin, who had now spoken much yet, “I think he was a grown man already in college, maybe. Definitely by the time we got out. He was a man. I mean that, a real man. At 22. This was before the pandemic. I lost touch with him last year. Need to message him and see what he’s up to.”
“What do you mean, ‘a real man’?”
“Oh, not what you think. He’s not super macho or anything. Not some guy into the manosphere who tries too hard to act tough or, well, manly. I just mean that he was responsible. He had his life together. And he had - kinda like Jeanie said about her friend’s sister – true confidence. By the way, he wasn’t really uptight or anything. This guy drank. He still had fun. Maybe less than me. I mean, I drank more than – well.”
They laughed and he went on.
“Anyway, Ricardo – that’s this guy’s name – he was just, I don’t know what to call it exactly, comfortable in his own skin. That’s it. I don’t mean poise or charm. I just mean that he was comfortable in any setting, with any group of people. He could talk to professors about literature and economics and he could talk to me and my friends about whether Kanye or Kendrick was better. He had no fear to ask questions in class or raise his hand – he’d even ask questions when he knew someone else in class didn’t understand and was too scared to say anything, I mean he’d take the fall for them and pretend he didn’t know. He could talk to girls that were like 10 out of 10, you know. He could walk into any bar. He was comfortable in any clothing – jeans or a suit.”
Robin began to trail off a bit.
“What do you think made him so confident?”
“Well, it wasn’t dressing nice. I mean he could dress really well, but he wasn’t arrogant. Sorry, Drew.”
“No, that’s okay,” said Drew, “I knew what you meant. Actually, I wanted to talk about that – dressing well.”
“Yeah, go on.”
“I started dressing up exactly because I felt like Kryste. If anything, wearing a suit made me feel more like an imposter. But I hoped wearing collared shirts and khakis and a tie and whatnot would give me confidence. While I hoped it would make people respect me more, what I really wanted was for me to respect me more. But it didn’t change anything. I didn’t feel any more confident.”
Drew shrugged, “but I liked the clothes and dressing nice kinda became my thing, so, you know, I kept doin’ it.”
“How about now?”
“How ‘bout now, what?”
“How do they make you feel now? I mean, now that you like wearing a jacket all the time, does it make you feel more like a grown-up?”
“No. I mean, I guess not. I don’t know. Maybe. I guess it does a bit. I’ve just grown used to wearing collared shirts and even a tie sometimes, so I don’t really feel different when I do dress nice. I guess I feel weird now if I dress down.”
“Drew probably wore khakis every day during the pandemic.”
“Haha, yeah,” he admitted sheepishly, “even teleworking for 11 months I still showered at 7am and wore a tie Monday through Thursday. Even when I didn’t have to be on Zoom or anything. It just felt weird not to, especially on workdays.
I guess one thing I will say is it does help me fit in at work. People don’t treat me as a kid or anything. Guess I’ve been there a couple years now though, so they know me. But it did help to dress slightly nicer than my coworkers. I suppose maybe they did respect me a little more quickly. But I’m not sure if it made a big difference.”
“Clothes shouldn’t make someone an adult or not,” interjected Kelli, “Something as artificial and socially constructed as what you wear shouldn’t make that much of a difference.”
“Yeah, I’m not saying they do,” said Drew.
“But some people seem to think they do.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t saying that either,” said Robin, “but it’s definitely true that wearing nice clothes can make people feel a little more confident. Especially in business situations. And they make other people think you know what you’re doing. It’s been studied and proven.”
“Wasn’t that study disproven?”
“When?”
“I don’t know, I just think I remember hearing something about that.”
“Well, I don’t know. It makes sense. Little, subtle things can make a difference.”
“But not that much of a difference.”
“Sure, I guess.”
“Returning to the matter at hand…” said Kryste.
“If little things like clothes don’t make the difference, what does?” asked Bella.
“You mean superficial things? Why should they make the difference?” asked Kelli, who thought that clothing was a social construct.
“I had a friend named Audrey who had a theory that you faked it until you made it,” said Bella.
“Which is still just faking it,” said Kelli.
“No, her idea was that after a while of faking it, you eventually got confident. Like eventually, pretending like you knew what you were doing became natural and easy. And then, one day you woke up and realized you did know what you were doing. And that you did feel like an adult.”
“Did your friend Audrey say this had happened to her? Or was it just a theory?”
“I don’t know. This was in college. We were, like, 19. I don’t think it had happened to her yet.”
“So, is there any actual proof that people do know what they’re doing?”
“Yeah, my friend’s sister, Tracy. Robin got it right when he said that stuff about feeling comfortable in your own skin. That’s exactly what it seemed like she did.”
“So you think this girl just faked it until one day she woke up and was a grown woman.”
“I don’t know. I know that she wasn’t an adult her whole life. She was older than us, but she seemed like a normal kid when me and Rachel were 6 or 13 or whatever.”
“Robin, how about your friend? Did he fake it until he made it?”
“I don’t know. Guess he seemed pretty mature the whole time I knew him. I think we were 18 when I met him. He just, IDK, had his act together already.”
“Why should maintaining composure make someone an adult?” asked Kelli, “Why is that important? Why would that be what makes the difference?”
“It’s not really maintaining composure. That’s like saving face.”
“Ok, whatever, that’s not what I meant. What you said about confidence or something.”
“Yeah, I don’t think confidence is what makes someone an adult or not,” said Kryste, “someone can be confident and still be very childish. And I think there are adults who don’t necessarily have a lot of self-confidence.”
“Ok. So, if it’s not confidence than what is it?” asked Nate.
“What we’re talking about is more than just confidence,” said Jeanie, “when I said my friend’s sister, Tracy, was comfortable in her own skin, I didn’t just mean she was confident. Confidence was a part of that. But it was like she just knew she was an adult, and acted accordingly.”
“What do you mean she acted accordingly?”
“I don’t mean she was boring or uptight. Just mature, I guess. Yeah, mature.”
“What’s that mean? Can you give us some examples?”
“I don’t know. What do you think it means? You know what mature means.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m terribly immature, but that doesn’t make me an adult.”
“Can we stop talking about this? Can we talk about something else?”
“Why?”
“I’m tired of talking about this.”
“Were we going to leave and get coffee and then go to that brewery?”
“Oh shit, yeah. Shit, I need to get ready.”
“Yeah, haha I’m not even dressed really.”
“Well, get your shit together so we can go.”
“I’m not sure I even want to go to a place called Adulting now.”
“Oh c’mon, it will be fun.”
“Yeah, it’s just a joke.”
“Well, it seems too serious now.”
“We can stop talking about it. We can forget the whole thing.”
“Ok.”
“I think you can joke about things that are serious, and still take them seriously,” said Kryste.
“What are you talking about?”
“Bella just said this whole adulting thing seems too serious now and the brewery won’t be fun.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll go. We can stop talking about it. I can take a joke.”
“Maybe serious things are the only things you really can joke about. And maybe there are some serious things that you can only deal with with jokes.”
“When did you get all profound all of a sudden, Kryste?”
She shrugged, “I’m ready to go.”
“Ok, let’s clean this shit up real fast and then go.”
Tim grabbed the plates and his empty glass and went into the kitchen. “Dude, you can borrow some of my clothes,” Nate told Robin, “Or we can swing back by your place.”
“Yeah, I’d like to stop at my place.”
“Sure you don’t want me to grab a shirt and some jeans for you real fast? You’re basically my size.”
“Nah, that’s alright. I’ll be like 5 minutes at my apartment.”
“Yeah, we were going to stop at Starbucks anyway. We could do that while the two of you go to Robin’s apartment. Do either of you want us to get anything?”
“Nah thanks.”
“Nah dog.”
“Ok. The rest of us will stop at Starbucks, grab coffee, and meet you at the brewery. Adulting.”
“Sounds good. I’ll text you the location.”
“I found it in maps already.”
“Cool.”
“Sounds good.”
“Alright.”
“Sounds good. See you in a few.”
“Bye.”
“Wait, we’re all walking out together, we don’t need to say goodbye yet.”
“Thanks for making it awkward, Drew.”
“Yeah, thanks, Drew.”
“Which direction are you guys walking?”
“That way.”
“Damn, that’s the same direction as us.”
“We’ll turn at the next street.”
“Still, we’ve got to walk together until then and we already said goodbye and Drew made it awkward.”
“Ok, we’ll just walk really fast and you’ll just walk really slow until you get to the corner and we’ll pretend like we don’t know each other. And everybody will ditch Drew.”
“Thanks.”
“Alright, goodbye for real this time.”
“Bye, see you in a few.”
“Dammit guys.”