Adulthood can sneak up on the best of us. One minute you are cruising the local shopping centre in Doc Martins, browsing Nirvana albums and trying on mood rings, and the next minute you have a mortgage, a muffin top and you worry about stuff like taxes and that annoying kid on the train playing his god-awful music too loud.
Still think you’re not a grown up? Let’s see.
You have become a lot less tolerant
So, you used to be a pretty laid-back person. You didn’t mind if the neighbours partied into the small hours of morning, in fact, you probably joined them. You would eat leftover pizza left out overnight. You didn’t mind sharing a hostel room with 20 other smelly backpackers snoring and having ‘relations’ in the bunk bed above you.
Now however, your tolerance levels have dropped to all-time low. The smallest things set you off. The person driving too slowly in front of you. People taking too long to pay at the checkout. Kids with their arse hanging out of their jeans. Bad food. Bad wine. Mess. In fact, you have turned into Mr Wilson from Dennis the Menace.
You realise you’re not indestructible
Kids have no fear. Strap a snowboard to an eight-year-old and the last thing he’s going to think about is breaking his leg or falling off a mountain. When you’re a kid, you are in no doubt that you are indestructible. Try snowboarding when you’re 38, and you will be much more aware of your own mortality and fragile composition.
When you realise this, you are more likely to take precautions. Like not throwing yourself off a mountain, or investing in health insurance from an insurer such as Frank. Good idea, too. It’s not going to be long until all those everyday aches and pains turn into a trip to the chiropractor, or you finally give up squinting and get glasses.
You start nesting
No more band posters or collections of photos tacked to the wall, no more mismatched furniture or mismatched crockery. Now you are ‘nesting’. You have art prints on the walls, and carefully co-ordinated photo frames. Your furniture matches, and you may even have cushions. You have a ‘best’ crockery set and ‘best’ towels, as well as everyday versions.
You spend time in the homewares department, and you browse garden centres on weekends. You do the dishes after meals, and you actually enjoy cooking. You have a mortgage. You get married. You have kids. You do the housework every weekend.
You start doing stuff your parents do
Your parents did warn you. While you thought you would never grow up and act like a ‘boring’ adult, it turns out your parents were right. You now do all the things your parents do. You go on wine holidays, you do the recycling, you do a weekly food shop, you budget your finances, and you watch – and understand – the news.
You stay in more
There were days when you used to go out six nights out of seven, staggering home at four in the morning with a kebab in hand. Now you find it hard to imagine going out two nights in a row without suffering some serious consequences. When exactly did hangovers become so horrific?
Now, staying in has become the new going out. You prefer throwing dinner parties for friends, or staying in with a nice bottle of wine and going to bed at a reasonable hour. After all, there are garden centres and homewares departments to be perused, for which you need to be rested.
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