The Path to Adulthood Is Paved With Hot Glue and Moderately-Priced IKEA Furniture

Becoming an adult is an incremental process.  For example, you don't go from shotgunning cans of Natty Light one day to keeping a well-stocked wine rack in your house the next--there are many in-between phases, like the phase where you start shelling out extra money for cans of Coors, which is followed by the phase where you class it up even more and start buying bottled beer, followed by . . . well, I'll tell you when I get there.

Anyway, today I decided to gauge my progress in a few areas of Growing Up.  Each of the following continua has been marked with endpoints I deemed representative of "typical college behavior" (on the left) and "grown-up behavior" (on the right).  Additionally, I've marked my own progress thus far somewhere in the middle of each.

Let's start off with an area in which I think I've made pretty decent progress since graduating: music downloading.

<---College----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Grown-Up--->

As you can see, I am more than halfway to the point of full adulthood in this area.  However, I think I'm gonna have to hold this position for some time, because I guess I still consider it a much less severe crime to download a song illegally than to actually purchase something by The Venga Boys.

I've made modest progress in some other areas as well.  My taste in decor has improved ever so slightly, as evidenced by the following two charts:

<---College----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Grown-Up--->

<---College----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Grown-Up--->

Additionally, I have abandoned (for the most part) my habit of repairing my clothes, shoes, purses, furniture, and other belongings with unsightly Duct tape--

<---College----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Grown-Up--->

--and upgraded to a more transparent (and thus classier) adhesive.

With respect to personal communication, I have found that AOL Instant Messenger is just so two years ago and that real semi-almost-adults in the know use Gmail chat when they want to procrastinate.

<---College----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Grown-Up--->

Of course, not every development is for the better; already I've found my tolerance for certain activities to be waning.

<---College----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Grown-Up--->

As old and creaky as I felt the other night at Broken Social Scene, though, I will have to concede that in the grand scheme of things, I haven't made too much progress toward being old.  There was, of course, that one incident when a girl on the basketball team I coach didn't know what a typewriter was and it made me feel like Father Time, but we'll call that a fluke for now.  In general, I will sum things up with a final chart.

                          THINGS THAT MAKE YOU FEEL OLD:

<---College----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Grown-Up--->

Comments

[kelly]

I think also there should be a chart about your wardrobe being made of

college: seventeen different pairs of variously dilapidated sweatpants

now: 40 tshirts, seven pairs of work pants, three pairs of holey sweatpants

grown-up: exclusively three piece suits and mom jeans

Kelly-you left out mismatched socks.

[Lauren]

Wow, when you guys describe my wardrobe like that, it almost makes me sound not hot.

you fixed things with duct tape? i only noticed you throwing things out that had duct tape on them.

[Lauren]

FOR THE LAST TIME, I DID NOT THROW AWAY YOUR DUCT TAPE SHOES.