On Adulthood

So one of the themes of this blog is that the authors are somewhere between college and official adulthood. This has led to a few of our loyal readers (okay, we probably don't have loyal readers yet) to ask for a definition of adulthood. Maybe not a definition, but some sort of criteria that would help determine when you officially reach adulthood. Keep in mind that whatever criteria we set here for adulthood, it can't fit me (otherwise this blog would be founded on lies).

I've ruled out using a specific age to determine adulthood. There are a couple reasons for this:
1. There are plenty of 24 year olds out there who act like they're 45 (and the other way around).
2. Whatever age I set, some of our blog readers would be older than this age, and we're really trying to grow our readership here

R.J. thinks that vacuum cleaner ownership is an indication of adulthood. I'm ruling this one out, because we're on our second vacuum cleaner already - which would make me an adult.

Sidenote: If you're asking yourself why does he have two vacuum cleaners then you're not alone. I ask myself the same question everyday. Apparently our perfectly fine/working first vacuum cleaner doesn't do a good job of getting dog hair off of couches. My solution to this was to keep the dog of the couch. Silly me.

Some of the other rejected criteria for adulthood followed the same general idea - if you own this, then you're an adult. I decided that ownership of some possession (or lack thereof) isn't the best criteria, as that's more a product of economics (or marital status) than adulthood. So that rules out potential criteria like having a mortgage, food processor, or getting rid of your college car.

I also don't think that parenthood = adulthood. I watch enough Dr. Phil and Discovery Health to know that plenty of non-adults have kids.

So I've come up with two ideas that I think might work. The first involves going to the doctor. Not just going to the doctor when you're sick or hurt, but going to the doctor because it's time to go to the doctor. So regular appointments or check-ups with a family physician. This family physician cannot be the same doctor that you went to when you were a kid. You have to have your own general doctor and go there when nothing (that you know of) is wrong with you. I'm sure that's a really good idea, but I think that makes you an adult.

The second potential sign of adulthood involves work holiday parties. There are all kinds of holiday parties. Since I graduated college, I've had three real jobs and had three different kinds of holiday parties. The first one I would classify as adults only and quiet - the kind of thing that you might do on a typical weekend. It was at a dinner theatre where you'd sit with one other couple and watch a play and eat dinner in silence. It was over by 10:00 PM and there was no hint of an after party. The second type (job #2) was the family friendly holiday party. It was scheduled from 10 AM - Noon and involved Santa and children and scrambled eggs. The third type of party is adults-only, open bar with plenty of options after the official party ends. Nothing too crazy, but at least enough activity to make you believe some of the statistics about people getting fired based on behavior at the holiday party.

Getting back to my theory on adulthood, the criteria here is what is your ideal holiday party is either #1 (adults only, in silence, in bed before 11:00) or #2 (children and Santa) then you're an adult. If your ideal holiday party is #3 (and it's not your one big night for the year) then you're probably not officially an adult - or you don't get out enough.

So those are just a couple of ideas. I had another one that revolved around what you look for when you buy a pair of jeans, but this post is probably already long enough. We'd love for you to post comments on your own criteria because a) I'm pretty sure we can come up with better ideas and b) I'd like to break the current blog record for comments to an individual post. Roy's guilty pleasure post has 14 comments (check local listings) and I'm pretty sure we can break the record.