Absurd Certainties

In Adulthood

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Things I am certain of in “adulthood”:

I will always look for another adult in any given situation - this will never change.

I will never actually feel like I’m an adult until I start to feel bad about my neck, as Nora Ephron has advised. I feel this day is looming on the horizon. Any day now I am going to wake up and be thoroughly disappointed in my neck. As of right now I’m just mildly disappointed in my forehead creases and receding hairline, which apparently I am the only one who can see it. Honestly, I think people are just trying to be kind by not giving in when I point out how much my hair has fallen out in the front.

I will never be able to eat sugar or chocolate without feeling hungover.

I will become more jiggly as time continues to march on. I was waving to my grandson, still so weird to say that, and my arms now flap. I alternated arms and with an alarming realization that BOTH were flapping. I feel like I might be becoming part bird at this point. I know I could try to do exercises to tighten the muscles there, but I tried that in the pool the other day and it ended up making my wrists, hands, and toes sore. I do not understand why my toes hurt after this exercise, but they must be attached somehow. My body really is quite strange these days.

I will never ever be able to drink full blown caffeinated anything ever again. Gone are the regular Folgers coffee mornings, no more double shot venti mocha’s with vanilla, and definitely NO SODA with even a drop of caffeine in it. My migraine riddled brain just cannot withstand the onslaught of chemicals that caffeine releases. I recently tried to switch back to regular coffee, just to test myself, I have failed miserably. I now have a giant canister of Folgers on my counter, because Costco is evil, and I can only fill my Keurig cup halfway with coffee and then add extra water, so essentially I drink vanilla flavored sad water every morning, hoping that the tiny amount of caffeine present will be enough to trick my body into waking up. I no longer have a best part of waking up. I just have sad non-coffee coffee to wake up to now.

I will never dye my hair again. I am certain of this, because well receding hairline notwithstanding, I have grey/gray hair right at my temples and chunking in the oddest way, the upkeep alone would require me to get a second job. I really and truly just don’t have the time, patience, or money for hair dye. Besides, I’m still being accused of being in my twenties, maybe my wisdom streaks will finally allow some to take me seriously. Although that’s doubtful because people nowadays (I feel OLD typing that) are DYING THEIR HAIR GRAY, this phenomenon is just outside of my comprehension.

We spend millions of dollars trying to fight off the grays and people are just willy nilly giving themselves grays for FUN. I earned every single one of these streaks, I will display them as badges or maybe just as head flair, because damnit these streaks show just exactly all the crazy-ish I’ve endured. There’s no price to be put on this wisdom, it doesn’t come in a bottle to be applied by another’s hand. But hey, to those who want it - have at it, you’ll get the real deal one day and it’ll feel completely different, of that I am certain.

I will constantly be astonished by how fast time moves. Just yesterday I was 20, and then I took a walk around the block and suddenly I’ve got 47 looming and breathing heavy behind me. Or maybe that’s just my lungs failing because I tried to take a walk around the block. I am astonished by the passage of time on the daily, it feels different all the time. Some days it moves impossibly slow, and on days when I need it to last longer, it speeds right by like a freight train that I just can’t seem to catch.

No one ever tells you this either. Oh sure, we hear platitudes about make every moment count, and don’t blink or you’ll miss it, but no one is running around like the town crier shouting at the top of their lungs - YOU ARE GOING TO MISS EVERYTHING IF YOU DON’T PAY ATTENTION TO THE TIME PASSING.

Consider this your town crier shout.

I will forever analyze everything I did as a youngerish person so that I don’t do it again. I am absolutely certain that my brain will never let me forget the one time I snuck out of the house at 19 and got pulled over by the cops for driving 115mph on the really wavy part of the freeway and could have died. He let me go with a warning, but only because I was in my pjs and trying to get home to take my grandma to the hospital, yeah, still feeling guilty over that 27 years later.

My mind loves to torture me with memories like that as soon as I’m trying to fall asleep or if I wake up to pee at 2 am. I often wonder if my subconscious is like “let’s wake up her and make her think it’s to pee, but really we’re just going to bombard her with all the dumb, bad things she’s done ever in her life. That’ll teach her to rest!” Ah the subconscious/conscious mind, such a terrible thing to waste.

Please excuse me. I have to go listen to a 90’s song that is stuck in my head as an earworm and I won’t be able to concentrate until I listen to it.

I know with absolute certainty that I will always think in song lyrics or movie lines and that the lyrics or lines will be from music and movies heard/watched repeatedly in my youngerish days. I have two degrees in psychology and my mind likes to think about random 80’s movies lines and 90’s music lyrics.

Again, no one tells you that the stuff you watch, read, or listen to will one day become your go to default way of thinking. I wish someone would have said “hey, Goonies is a really great film, but really you don’t need to reference it every time you think about ice cream or say ‘hey you guysssss’ as your standard greeting”, though I kinda like those things so maybe it’s ok that I wasn’t warned about that.I should have been warned though that not every guy would Lloyd Dobbler me after a fight, that is a really high standard that I held for DECADES.

I will forever be amazed by how no matter how old we get, we still mostly behave as if we’ve not gotten past the fart jokes and everything is a sexual innuendo phase of youth. Fart jokes will forever be funny and literally everything can be turned into something about sex. Doesn’t matter what it is - sex is in there somewhere. And that this happens no matter what, even with the threat of being #metoo’d. I am absolutely certain that will never change, someone somewhere no matter the age will find a way to turn something dirty, and someone will find it funny. I had no idea that this would still be a thing in my 40’s, but here we are.

I am absolutely certain that when I get to my next decade and maybe the one after that, I will still find ways to laugh at all the ridiculous ways we try to adult. We will always be in a hurry, but maybe slightly less. And lastly, We will always find things to be certain of because human nature dictates we do so, we are an anxious species, so the more certainty we can find even in the smallest of ways, the better off we’ll be.

While I am certain of all of the above things, I am also certain that with time, I may change my mind about my certainty. I’m an adult now, by all societal standards, which means I get to choose what I am certain of. No one ever tells you that either. Mostly we hear that the only things in life to be certain of are death and taxes. I say bollocks (wish I was British sometimes), hogwash (midwestern - I lived in Indiana for 10 months), and bullshit (what Vegas, my hometown, was built on). I just proved you can absolutely be certain about a whole barrage of things, and that those things can change no matter what stage of life you’re in.

So, tell me friend- what are you certain of?