My dad used to read us headlines from the Weekly World News and The Onion and try to pass them off as fact. Looking back, this is a hilarious parenting move that I may adopt someday, but at the time it was confusing. Like when you have a nagging feeling that you’re getting punked, but can’t quite figure out how. As a kid, I didn't draw the distinction between the lowbrow crazy of the Weekly World News and the highbrow commentary of The Onion. In fact, without any context, I wasn’t totally sure either publication was so different from the Wall Street Journal. My early understanding of current events was spotty at best.
When I was maybe 19 (with a marginally clearer understanding of the world and a desire to get paid for writing things—ha. ha.) it occurred to me that writing for The Onion would be the dream job. I assumed I'd sit around on a beanbag chair alternating between dark coffee and gummy bears while cracking jokes with bespectacled coworkers until someone in charge called a lunch break. At the end of the day I'd crank out an easy 1000 words that perfectly satirized some element of society and peace out to the local dive bar where I'd continue cracking jokes (sophisticated ones, mostly) over tall boys of PBR. I'd be living the writer lifestyle only instead of Penniless Solitary Angst I'd have Salaried Communal Comedy. Trading up, obviously. I researched internships, but my teenage dream never became a grown-up reality.
I no longer wonder if The Onion is hard news, and I no longer want to work there (read: I'd sell my unborn first-born for the chance), but I do place The Onion in an elite category of comedy I reserve for other gems like Jon Stewart (my dream man) and Arrested Development (RIP). And while I don’t believe the articles to be fact, I see the grain of truth in every one.
Last week, right before I left to chaperone a school trip to New Orleans, I read an Onion article that struck a nerve (or chord? I’m bad with idioms). The article was about the impending extinction of the grown-up—a rare breed of human that knows how to pay taxes (and does so on time), resist impulse shopping and start a stable career, among other things. As I was reading, I realized I could check off very few of the boxes that would label me a member of this dying breed. I was waiting for my take-out salad at Nectar on Court Street (RED ALERT: don’t grown-ups cook?), and I looked around at the other patrons also reading The Onion, wondering if they suspected from the moment I walked in that I might not be a real grown-up. A post-pubescent poser—poorly playing at adulthood.
A few years ago, several people forwarded me a Dave Barry column on what he calls the new phases of life. In addition to active retirement (skipped that paragraph), Barry inserts a new phase in-between college and career called The Odyssey. Like Odysseus on his epic journey, The Odyssey stage of life involves doing exciting things (one-way tickets to far-away places, Teaching for America, short-term publishing fellowships in Southern India, or whatever) that don’t last long, but allow you to get out and see what’s what before buckling down and starting a career and—God forbid—a family. Maybe The Odyssey is a nice way of validating the fact that you couldn’t quite get your shit together in a bad economy, but it does sound pretty sweet, right? If you choose to accept your Odyssey you’re buying yourself a little time before settling down into the dark realm of the grown-up. But now with grown-ups facing complete extinction, I wonder if The Odyssey phase will just keep on stretching. For many peeps in their twenties, that seems to be exactly the route life is taking.
I’m in a confusing position. After college, I took a one-year fellowship in urban education in Boston, expecting that to be the start, not end, of my Odyssey. I think people forwarded me that article to soothe my anxiety—to tell me it would be okay. Either that, or they knew I was a bit of a wreck and had no idea what to do with my life. Or both. So I took this fellowship, figuring it would allow me to do something worthwhile while also writing and figuring out the next step. I had cut ties with my boyfriend and had no ties to SoCal to begin with; an Easterly Odyssey seemed like a good move.
Only unlike many 20-somethings, my Odyssey came to a screeching halt when I decided to take my one-year gig to the next level and become a TEACHER. Right up there with the most grown-up of jobs. A job that comes with a real salary, real benefits and—most importantly but least happily—really real responsibility. I have no idea what I was thinking. My Odyssey was apparently finito, and adulthood loomed unpleasantly.
This choice to teach leaves me wondering whether I’m a real grown-up. Once I go down that path, I start to ask myself if I want to be a grown-up or if I’m content with faking it. Or maybe, I could be a hybrid half-grown up—a mutant form evolved to keep the species semi-alive. Highly advanced.
On the one hand, I spend my days telling kids they’re taking too long in the bathroom and that they need to lower their voices. That holding hands in school is inappropriate even if he’s been your bf for a whole two weeks. I have to answer to bosses and return emails promptly; I am held accountable every single day of the week. The last few men I've dated have been slightly balding. I pay rent. That’s real, baby, that’s being a grown-up, and I’m not sure how it happened.
But on the other hand. Because there’s always another hand. My dad did my taxes for me, I can never say no to another drink, and I just bought an all-lace tank top from the sale rack at Madewell because…no, there’s no good reason for that. I’m not sure these confessions—alone or in sum—disqualify me from adulthood, but they don’t help my case.
My Odyssey seems to be over, cut short by the stark reality of real life. People treat me like a grown-up and expect me to live up to the name. And when it’s all said and done, I can play the part pretty well, as long as I’m still allowed lace tanks and vodka. Frequently. Though grown-ups like our parents may be facing extinction, it does seem a powerful (?) new form is waiting in the wings. Call them fake grown-ups or Odyssey-goers. Call it faking it until you make it. Whatever it is, the shoe fits for now.
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