Monday, June 9, 2008

Oldness

So I definitely fall, these days, into the adult rather than kid category as far as social expectations are concerned, which leaves me wondering if I am, in fact, sufficiently adult.

I mean, I have a job these days, so that's something. But there's all this shit that I do that felt kind of charming and carefree when I was a young person and now that I'm older I feel stranger about it. Especially when I'm wearing my work clothes. Like the other night I found myself locked out of my apartment and so I removed the screen and climbed in through the window. Or today I stopped and got an ice cream cone on the way home and it was dripping all over the place and I walked through the streets with my slacks and my shirt and sticky and slightly dirty hands.

I don't know. I don't know where precisely to draw those lines. I always hated those books where it was supposed to be liberating to be free from the constraints of adult life, although as someone who stopped working for eight months last year maybe I should have different feelings about it.

I guess I feel, which will come as no surprise to anyone, that these things are harder on women, that an adult woman is supposed to be more poised and seamless than an adult male, who is allowed all kinds of boyish charm, random obsessiveness, and sloppiness.

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