Adulting, First Class

I'm a fraud.

I've been an adult for years, and I still have no idea what I'm doing.

A few months ago, I decided to buy a new product with which to clean my shower. I had been using the generic cleaner that I used on the bathroom sink, but it didn't seem to work on the shower very well. I had no idea what to put on my grocery list, though. I was leaning towards, "Something to clean the shower with but I don't even know what people use for that so yeah."

When I had to sign up for benefits for my full-time position, I could hardly understand a word in the retirement program package. It was all, "Blah blah you should save this much unless you plan to be in a higher tax bracket when you retire in which case you should save this much." What? How does one plan to achieve a higher tax bracket? How would I even know I'd achieved a higher tax bracket? I don't even know what tax bracket I'm in now!

I just don't feel like I'm actually an adult. I feel like I'm in a perpetual state of audition to be said adult, and that any moment now somebody with a clipboard is going to come up to me and say, "Sorry, we've decided not to cast you in the role of Adult. You can leave now." Except that keeps not happening. But nobody gives me a script, either. But if I'm ever like, "Wait, what's happening? What are we doing?" then all of the other people in the role of Adult are like, "Ha ha! You've been doing this for years. You should totally know what we're doing!" and then proceed to not explain anything. (Except for my parents, who are pretty understanding of my lack of adultness, probably because they still see a child when they look at me because I will always be a child to them because parents.) It's like it's all one humongous charade, and it's terribly blasé to point out that the charade is indeed a charade.

Does anyone else know what I mean???

When you know that you don't know anything about being an adult, you start to question the validity of adult things you do. When I say adult things, I mean things that you don't realize you have to do until you are an adult and you realize that someone has to do them or they don't get done. For example, when you go to Disneyland, somebody has to buy the plane tickets, book a ride from the airport to the hotel, book the hotel, arrange for a ride from the hotel to Disneyland, buy the tickets for Disneyland, make any Disney dining reservations, and so on and so forth. I was the person who did all of those things except book the hotel and arrange rides to Disneyland (Pepper booked the hotel, and the hotel happily had a shuttle going directly to Disneyland). This meant that, as our Disneyland trip drew nearer, the more convinced I became that it wasn't going to happen. After all, I'd never bought plane tickets or booked a ride from an airport or bought Disneyland tickets before. I'd never had to be the responsible adult who did that. I was vastly unprepared to be the responsible adult who did that, and thus in my total inexperience I must have done something wrong. You follow?

In short, I was a nervous wreck up until the last minute possible.

I was a nervous wreck while packing.

I was a nervous wreck as I printed off our Disneyland tickets, our flight itineraries, our SuperShuttle itineraries, and our reservation information. Were all of those things accessible from my phone? Absolutely. But I wasn't about to take any chances, not even when I had a portable phone charger with enough juice for two full charges.

I was a nervous wreck 24 hours before our flight, when I discovered a strange error on my and my roommates' plane tickets. Instead of being separated (like this: Awkward Mormon Girl Middle Name Obnoxious), they were squished together (like this: AwkwardMormonGirlMiddleName Obnoxious). I called the airline (which ugh ugh ugh). The particular airline worker to whom I was connected proceeded to call me "honey" throughout our interaction.

I told her that our names were showing up weird and obviously I had to fix that or else our boarding passes wouldn't match our IDs and then nobody would let us on the plane because they would think we were terrorists.

The worker brought up our flight information and informed me that, apparently, our first and middle names had been squished together because they were too long and they wouldn't fit on the boarding passes otherwise.

"So it won't be a problem?" I asked.

"No, honey. They can look at your passenger data and see your real names there."

I went to bed, cheered, and then realized that I should not be cheered. Problem or not, it was still one more thing to worry about!

The next day, at the airport, I had like seven fits of anxiety about what was going to happen. You'd think I could just relax, knowing that I had prepared as much as I possibly could, and leave well enough alone. But I couldn't leave well enough alone, because by arranging most everything I had made myself the mother, father, orphan-raising big sister, and other assorted legal guardians of the entire trip. I was responsible for everything.

"We're fine," I said over and over. "Everything is fine. There's no reason why anything should go wrong." And yet I kept expecting that something would.

However, the Seamstress, Pepper, Little Brother, and I were on time for the airport. I'd remembered the papers with our confirmation codes. Everyone had their ID. There were no problems with our boarding passes, nobody was accused of being a terrorist, Little Brother wasn't accused of being an adult trying to pass as a teenager, I wasn't accused of being a teenager trying to pass as an adult, we found the right gate, and the weather was great. The plane didn't crash on the way to Cali, either. When we got to LAX, we found my luggage and the shuttle pickup without too much trouble.

And lo and behold! The weather was...pleasant. The natives were all bundled up in big coats, but we were enjoying the balminess of the breeze. Our shuttle took us to our hotel, we checked in, we found our room. Lo and behold again! Our room was one of the nicer hotel rooms I've stayed in.

I was exhausted, what with the long day I'd had at work and the travel and the amount of anxiety I had exerted over the past 24 hours. I went to bed as soon as I was able...and hardly slept all night. It was anxiety again. But this time...it was good anxiety. I was as excited as I get the night before Christmas!

Finally, it was time to wake up. It wasn't long before everyone was washed, dressed, groomed, fed, and waiting impatiently on the curb for the Disneyland shuttle.

As we waited, it was now Pepper's turn to be anxious. As I said before, Pepper was the one responsible for this portion of the trip, and she started to worry that the shuttle wasn't going to come as expected. "I know everything is fine," she said, "but..."

Apparently, the greater portion of adulthood is knowing everything is fine but worrying about it regardless.