Adulthood sneaks up on you

It creeps up on you, adulthood does, until one day the increasing banality of your existence hits you in the face like a baseball bat. Generic brand, of course.

One day you’re a hard-partying, irresponsible kid with a poor work ethic, bad posture and a negative bank account balance. Then one day, you wake up, remove the Crest Whitestrip from your mouth and realize how old and lame you’ve become.

You used to make excuses to your boss for being late to work, now you make excuses to your friends about why you can’t go out. Instead of worrying about having enough green to roll doobies, you’re worried about rolling your 401(k) plan. Your lameness is compounded by the fact that you use the word doobie.

Like most serious disorders, adulthood and responsibility, and your awareness of it, happens in stages:

The creep: It starts slowly, with little things like filling up your tires to get better gas mileage or going home early from the bar because you’ve got a big meeting at work tomorrow. Then it grows. You start wearing glasses instead of contacts because it’s cheaper. You pay bills on time. You actually RSVP when people ask you to. From there, the malignant cancer of responsibility and prudence grows to the point where one day you’re wearing a helmet to ride a bicycle ... a stationary bicycle.

Realization: This painful moment comes when you discover how far into adulthood you’ve fallen. Some kids at the store may laugh at the fact that they’re dressed like refugees from hygiene and you’re not. Maybe it happens when the young lady sitting across from you at the bar gives you the “Eww, creepy old man” look. But when it happens, it happens hard.

Anger: You rail against your lameness. You argue with it. “I use the word fail as an interjection.” “I have a Twitter account, even though I’m not exactly sure what the point of it is.”

Action: At this point, you begin taking steps to reverse the trend. You may start listening to current music and struggle to keep up with the latest doings of celebrities. You may start shopping at trendy youth-oriented clothing stores. You may get an earring. 

Failure: The clothes from Aeropostale look ridiculous on a person with love handles. You can’t, for the life of you, figure out what skeet, skeet means. The earring makes you look like an extra from “Milk.”

Face it, you’re old and responsible. Accept your fate. And for God’s sake, take those silly sandals off.

Jim Cook can be reached at or wherever lameness resides.