Perhaps I’ve come to this realization too late in the game. Along with many of my fellow Americans, I was watching American football over the weekend. It was during one of the games that it struck me: I am older than every single player out there on the field. It’s one of those “you know you are old when” moments, one that came shockingly because we’ve all grown up looking up towards professional athletes. For the longest time, these were people who are older, stronger, better, and richer. And now I’m just an old fart watching kids play a game.
This is it: being older than entire sport teams is my demarcation line. I now firmly feel like an adult, one hundred percent. Any remnants of childhood innocence have ceased to exist. No one mistakes me for a student at my university job. I probably won’t get carded at bars, if I were the drinking type. There isn’t enough cocaine-grade retinol to erase the age lines on my face.
At least my hair is as full and black as it ever was.
This is not to say I was immature before. As the child of first-generation immigrants, I had to be an adult way earlier than I should have been allowed to. But it’s not like crossing the magic 18 or 21 somehow bestow upon us some magical new feeling. Maybe the difference between 20 and 21 is truly just the number on the birthday cake. The changes are so gradual year-over-year that it all feels the same. There’s nothing extravagant about it: make money, then try not to spend all of it. (That’s not very American, is it?)
I think for my friends who have birthed children, there truly is a “switch” of sorts. Soon as the baby comes out of the mother, the clarity of where you stand and the job to be done must be absolutely crystal clear. The success of this thing will be entirely dependent upon you for the next two decades. Surely that will make you feel like a full-on adult very quickly!
Poor people food.