Ian Lang: What It Really Means To Be A "Grown-Up" Today

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It’s July 4th, and I’m one year older (and so is America, I guess). I did a little recap earlier this year on the state of manhood in 2011, and I have neither the material nor the inclination to do the same in the form of a mid-year report. Let’s just say that now that it’s July 2012, we’re probably thinner, tanner and more frequently shirtless than we were in January. Or I am, anyway. True story: This past weekend at my bachelor party in Chicago I was shirtless at least 70% of the time, including on the L train to Wrigley and during the subsequent game. "Sun’s out, guns out" is my summer mantra. Good times. Instead, now that I’m closer to 30 than I am to 25, I thought this would be a good opportunity to reflect on growing older, growing up and how those two don’t always correspond. Or, like, ever correspond. I may be pushing 30, I may be getting married in a couple of months (don’t worry, honey -- that wasn’t meant to sound so hypothetical), and I most certainly feel like a man. Despite all that, I still don’t feel anything like a grown-up. I wake up, I exercise and I go to work on time. When I come home, I make dinner, take care of obligations like bills and such, and have a cocktail. I mean, is that it? Am I a grown-up? Aren’t those the things that grown-ups do? Wake up early, go to work, go to bed early. I don’t even know how I could make those activities seem more benign and adult than they already are. I guess I could drink nicer booze or get up even earlier, but I don’t think it would matter. I’d probably still feel like my college self, just with something approaching fiscal responsibility and additional life skills that have -- knock on wood -- kept me from dying up until this point. Maybe I could look into buying a house, but the home prices where I live are enough to make your testicles retract. Or ovaries, if you’re a girl. Can ovaries even retract? See? I’m supposed to be a grown-up, and I’m not even firm on ovarian retraction policies. What about getting married? That’s a grown-up thing, right? Assuming her ovaries don’t retract, I’m tying the knot (god, I hate that phrase) on September 1st, and admittedly it does make me feel a little more like an adult. If you haven’t tried it, calling someone your wife just reeks of older man awesomeness, particularly if that person is someone you’re actually married to. It definitely makes you feel like more of a grown-up -- that is, until you actually start planning how to make it happen. Figuring out venues, attire, food and entertainment will make you feel pretty damn infantile, not to mention that without parental assistance (because our parents are ostensibly the last generation of “real” grown-ups), you couldn’t pay for one-tenth of what it costs. The more I think about the things I do and how none of it makes me feel like an adult, the more I’m of the opinion that adulthood is more of a concept than a reality. My parents had me by the time my dad was my age, which is a pretty terrifying thought. There is just no way, no way on this earth, that a baby would not die in my care at this juncture. I just know it. Even people who make way more money than I do seem to have money problems, and the percentage of our population that doesn’t is miniscule. Couples who have been together for decades can and do fight and quibble like teenagers. I’ve seen, on numerous occasions, seemingly sophisticated grown men get so drunk and behave so appallingly you’d think it was their first time hitting the sauce. Hell, I was not the oldest shirtless drunk person at Wrigley field on Friday. Not even close, though I was the only shirtless person I saw on the L -- a fact of which I am proud. No, while we may become adults physically and sexually (together, you and me, right now), I don’t think we ever reach a plateau known as being a grown-up, where we just all of a sudden know sh*t. Irrespective of age, we’re all just human beings synthesizing knowledge from our last mistake that probably brought us a lot closer to extreme hardship and/or death than we realized. No one ever has it all figured out, not our parents or us or anyone else. We learn as we go, and once we have kids, we hope to hell they don’t figure out that that’s what’s going on. At least not until they’re nearly 30, on public transportation and shirtless. Continue Reading

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