Ten ways I knew I’d finally become an adult.

I’ve always maintained that eventually you do have to become and adult, but you never have to become a grown up.  The difference is of course, that being an adult is being responsible for yourself. As well as willingly, even enthusiastically, owning you actions, thoughts and words, no matter how embarrassing they may actually be.  While being a grown up is the generic equivalent to being the horrifically untrendy geography teacher, who somehow still thinks he is trendy.  You know the guy, he called everyone dude, threw slang around like it was going out of fashion.  But he did this while wearing a patterned hand-knitted jumper and smoked a pipe when he wasn’t in class.

But lately I’ve realised that after thirty-three years of knocking around the planet I’ve somehow gone and become an adult.  Yup that’s right, I’m now a responsible human being.  But unlike my geography teacher in school I’m still hip. I play PC games, I make chainmail, I still play Dungeons and Dragons, I play a ukulele goddess damn it! Anyway, while coming back from a trip to a knitting shop earlier today, I got to thinking about the signs that made me realise that I’m no longer an overgrown kid.  This post is the fruits of those thoughts.

So here are the ten ways I realised I had become all grown up.  Enjoy.

10. I not only have a last will and testament, but I realised I needed to update it in order to account for changes in my circumstances.

9. My own birthdays mean almost nothing to me anymore, but making my friends and families birthdays joy filled affairs mean everything to me.

8. The phrase “Amanda is going through a troubling period in her life, hair has started growing where there was no hair before, and she’s started to notice girls in a new way…” has started to have meaning again in my life.  I found a hair, a big-ass curly one at that, growing out of the centre of an old scar.  And I’ve started to notice just how annoying girls in their 20’s can be.  Seriously if I hear one more high-pitched cackling laugh from a gormless twenty-something dressed like a chav reject from the television show “Misfits” I may actually be able to claim temporary insanity for my subsequent actions.  This is a sad state of affairs, since I used to just find younger women hot.

7. I have a medical condition which always seemed to me to be the embodiment of what we shall call, a person of superior maturity.  I have a hernia.  It may only be a hiatus hernia, but still…

6. Where not long ago I would have eaten it by the fistful, I now avoid fried food because I like my heart beating inside my chest, instead of it being dissected by a future dentist.  (Ten points to anyone who recognises that reference.)

5. I now actively look for computer games which have enthralling stories, preferably including some biting social commentary.  Needless to say I’ve yet to find many of those.

4. My last birthday present from my partner was a coffee grinder.  Not a new piece of revealing leather wear, not a shiny new strap-on, not a boxed set of horror movies.  A coffee grinder.  To make things worse I asked for it.

3. In my teens, and early twenties I looked at other women’s bodies with unrestrained jealousy. In my late twenties I looked with envy at other people’s gothwear.  Now in my thirties I gaze longingly at other people’s houses and find myself imagining what I would have done differently with the decor.

2. Once the thought of sex, involving multiple positions, toys, whips, chains and preferably a third person every single night was heavenly.  Now I just want sex every other night, after all it’s so nice to snuggle up to someone, cuddle them to sleep and then read Terry Pratchett ’til the wee small hours of the morning.  Though the third person would still be very welcome.

1. Finally the most damning sign of the oncoming personal apocalypse, I no longer think longingly of eating chocolate morning, noon and night.  In fact often weeks go by with my having eaten absolutely no chocolate at all. What’s happened to me? I used to think of chocolate the same way I thought of sex, often and usually intermixed.

Well I guess there’s nothing left for it now but to buy a beautiful coffin and prepare for the inevitable. By occasionally sleeping in it and making a gorgeous coffee table/sex toy case out of it. I did say adult, but screw ever growing up. (Ten more points for identifying the coffin reference)

Oh and just to add a little point of interest, my friend Rachel turns 24 today, so happy birthday Rach.  I’m dedicating this one to you, you’re still a young one so don’t be getting all down in yourself.