Does This Mean I'm an Adult Now?

Two weeks ago, on April Fool's Day, I woke up hearing the theme song from Jaws in my head, and for a moment I couldn't figure out why. I've included the audio to it below, just to help you understand how ominous the morning suddenly seemed to me.



I thought, "Self, you don't normally wake up hearing the Jaws theme song in your head, unless you just had that nightmare again about how the Kardashian sisters suddenly decided they wanted to be your best friend and you decided the only natural response was to dive into an ocean full of sharks because that would be less scary. Why oh why do you feel like something bad is about to happen?"

And then I realized that nothing was about to happen. It had already happened before I even woke up.

No. NO! NOOOOOOO!!!!!

Not yet! I'm not ready! I can't go through with it! Why is this happening to me?

It was my thirtieth birthday. This was my reaction:

Okay. So maybe turning thirty isn't as scary as being ambushed by Norman Bates wielding a knife while I'm in the shower. But the terror was real. I am now three decades old.

Those of you who turned thirty years ago are probably rolling your eyes and shaking your heads. You're probably thinking, "Thirty isn't old. Just wait until you're watching a commercial for arthritis medication and you point at one of the actors and say, 'I went to high school with that guy!'"

I know thirty isn't that old. But I did look in the mirror on my birthday, and to my dismay I saw lines in my face that I'd never noticed before. Maybe that was Mother Nature's "gift" to me, as if she was saying, "Happy Birthday to you, CHUMP! You didn't think you'd look young forever, did you? Hahahahaha!"

But the truth is, I started teaching college students when I was in my early twenties, and that was enough to make me prematurely age by at least ten years. The first time I got to sit on the other side of the desk was when I first started feeling like an adult, because it was if I had stepped into this different phase in my life that my students hadn't yet experienced.

I didn't mention my birthday before because I was kind of reluctant to admit that I wasn't twenty-nine anymore. I liked being twenty-nine. I thought that maybe I could just pretend to be twenty-nine for a few more years. But I do actually feel older. For example, maybe if I was fifteen years younger, I'd think guys like Taylor Lautner and Justin Bieber were cute. But all I can think when I look at them is, "They look so young." I also think, "It'd be nice if I could watch either of them without wondering if they ever feel like throwing up after spouting sickeningly sweet lines that make teenage girls swoon and make adult women like me think that real guys never talk like that unless they're chatting up the girl who looks like a supermodel and also happens to be ten years younger than me."

I have to admit that I thought I'd be in a different place by the time I was thirty. When I was twenty, I thought that I'd be married by the time I was thirty. I thought I'd be done with my Ph.D. I thought I'd have a full-time salary, a house, and a car. I thought I'd be living in some college town teaching literature and writing to students who were enthusiastic about learning or at least could get through a full hour of class without discreetly watching videos on their cell phones.

Instead, I'm thirty years old and I'm still single. I've been on a series of awkward/bad/boring/makes me want to ditch him but I don't want to be rude except he doesn't seem to mind being rude seeing as how he's spent the past hour talking about himself without asking me any questions and didn't even offer to pay for my drink but WHATEVER dates that I've become just a tad cynical.

I'm not done with graduate school, mainly because getting a master's degree and a Ph.D. took a lot longer than I thought. It's also a lot more mind-numbing, soul-sucking, makes you want to cry yourself to sleep but you can't sleep now you have seven more chapters of critical theory to read and fifty more papers to grade so suck it up SLACKER than I thought, but that's another story.

I don't have a full-time salary, because I can't work full-time while I'm in graduate school, which is a full-time job in itself. So instead I (barely) get by with part-time jobs that pay me just enough money to buy ramen noodles for dinner.

I don't have a house or live in a college town. I rent an apartment and live in Chicago, a city I love but that also annoys the hell out of me sometimes, or maybe I've just been living here for too long. I don't have a car; I take the bus and the train, where it is not unusual to sit next to someone who will start yelling at you or hitting on you if you look at him or her for a split second (or even if you don't look).

I am teaching literature and writing, and several of my students inspire me because of their enthusiasm for what I'm teaching them. Sometimes they even teach me something new because of how they respond to the material and how they view the world, which is partly why I keep teaching. Several other students, however, send approximately 10,000 text messages a day and update their Facebook pages every five minutes while claiming that they don't have enough time to complete the homework I assign them. But I digress.

I already made my Things to Do Before I Turn 40 list a few months ago. I didn't make a list like that for my thirtieth birthday, though, because when I was twenty I just kept thinking about how in a year I'd finally be old enough to drink alcohol. (But now I still just order soda when I go to bars, because I stopped pretending to like alcohol years ago. Hey! I'm the nerdy but doesn't-succumb-to-peer-pressure-so-that-makes-me-cool kid in one of those Just Say No videos! Go me!)

It's kind of sad to realize that I'll never be in my twenties ever again. There are things that I feel too old to do now. For example, I can't date a twenty year old, because then I would just keep thinking about how he isn't old enough to buy me alcohol, even though I don't even drink alcohol, but still, it'd nice to have that option. I can't be a member of 20 Something Bloggers anymore (that's why I removed the 20sb badge from my blog), which is too bad because it's a really cool online community where I got to participate in interesting discussions and met some really awesome bloggers.

I can't party all night at clubs with other young people without people looking down their noses at me and saying, "Aren't you a little old to be doing that? You have to work in the morning." But then again, even though I did go clubbing when I was in my twenties, I didn't really like it too much because I just kept thinking about how much I would rather be in a quiet coffeehouse or a bookstore than on a crowded dance floor.

One thing I started doing in the last year of my twenties that I still intend to do in my thirties was blogging. I actually started this blog a little over a year ago (so I guess this is my belated one-year blogiversary, whooo! This is my 119th post!) as a twenty-ninth birthday gift to myself. Before I started blogging, I'd never shown my writing to anyone outside of the fiction writing classes I'd taken. But now that I've started blogging, I've stepped into this fascinating world of bloggers that I had never been in before. It also gave me the courage to finally start entering short story contests and submitting stories to literary magazines, which I've always wanted to do but have never done before. Even if it's years before I get published, the fact that I'm finally sharing my writing with people is something.

I suppose it is kind of cool to be in my thirties now. Somehow it sounds more grownup than being in my twenties, though I still have a lot of growing up to do. I guess I should stop thinking that Froot Loops is part of a balanced diet, and I should stop listening to Britney Spears, but...nah. Maybe when I'm forty.

Oh God. In ten years I'm going to be forty.

I think I can hear the Jaws theme song in my head again.


When was the first time that you felt like an adult?


(Side note: Chemistry.com is offering a "freebies" weekend where you can take their personality test and have matches picked for you for free; it lasts until April 18. Just thought I'd send that out in case anyone is interested in checking out the site; out of all the dating sites I've tried, chemistry is actually the one that I like the best.)