The Three Stages of Adulthood
As near as I can tell, there are three stages of adulthood:
Stage one is when you decide that you are too grown up to eat horrible sugared cereals with marshmallows in them, even if you have lived your whole life loving Booberry with an unreasonable passion. Being grown up means putting away childish things because you are, well. grown up. And so when Halloween season comes around and the familiar boxes reappear on the shelves, you say, “No, no, I’ve outgrown it. I’m an adult now.”
Stage two is when you realize that you are in fact an adult and that means that you can do any damn thing you want, including slamming down whole boxfuls of sugary cereals that are dyed a color blue that does not exist in nature, or, alternately, pouring them out so you can pick out the marshmallows. As an adult, you have the right to do foolish or childish things because that’s your decision to make, and you’re making it right now. Anyone who calls it immature simply doesn’t understand that you’ve grown beyond simple labels like that, and have become more comfortable with who the adult version of you is. The fact that adult you like Booberry is just another facet of who you are, and that’s just fine.
And stage three is where you realize that you are perfectly within your rights as an adult to eat a box of Booberry every year when they release it again, but for the love of God there’s absolutely no reason you should because that stuff is terrible.
As of this year, I have achieved stage three.
If there’s a stage four, I don’t want to know about it.
Stage one is when you decide that you are too grown up to eat horrible sugared cereals with marshmallows in them, even if you have lived your whole life loving Booberry with an unreasonable passion. Being grown up means putting away childish things because you are, well. grown up. And so when Halloween season comes around and the familiar boxes reappear on the shelves, you say, “No, no, I’ve outgrown it. I’m an adult now.”
Stage two is when you realize that you are in fact an adult and that means that you can do any damn thing you want, including slamming down whole boxfuls of sugary cereals that are dyed a color blue that does not exist in nature, or, alternately, pouring them out so you can pick out the marshmallows. As an adult, you have the right to do foolish or childish things because that’s your decision to make, and you’re making it right now. Anyone who calls it immature simply doesn’t understand that you’ve grown beyond simple labels like that, and have become more comfortable with who the adult version of you is. The fact that adult you like Booberry is just another facet of who you are, and that’s just fine.
And stage three is where you realize that you are perfectly within your rights as an adult to eat a box of Booberry every year when they release it again, but for the love of God there’s absolutely no reason you should because that stuff is terrible.
As of this year, I have achieved stage three.
If there’s a stage four, I don’t want to know about it.