Growing up is hard to do!

I remember when I was a girl and I would buy a wallet with the allowance money I had saved, or mum and dad would take me shopping and I would beg to have a purse. I would take the wallet home and fill out that dorky card that comes with it with my name and address, and keep all the fake paper cards that said CREDIT CARD on them in the slots. Dreaming of the day when I would have cards to fill those glorious slots.

Air Miles, Mastercard, Visa, BankCard, Driver’s License, Shoppers Optimum, Doctor’s Card, Dentist’s Card, Nail Tech’s card, Sears, Blockbuster, Esso, Blue Cross. . . . It’s gotten to the point where I turn down savings offers at tills because I don’t have room for the cards!

Do you remember when being grown up seemed like the best plan in the world? You were gonna have your own place, get that dog you were begging for, stay up all night and order pizza when you felt like it! The fridge would have all your favourite goodies and you would read all your books in the bathtub, soggy pages be damned!!

But there were a few things they forgot to tell you about being a grown up. Oh yes, my little friends, there is always a down side and you must never forget the small print. Here are some things I bet we all figured out the hard way. . . .

1. If you don’t take the garbage out, no one else will.
2. If you don’t vaccuum, no one else will.
3. When your dog gets worms, there is no one but you to bleach the entire house and take her to the vet.
4. That funky smell from your kitchen is a potato forgotten in the drawer under the oven. They will rot, it will take months, but they will rot.
5. If you don’t change the furnace filter, no one else will.
6. If you don’t mow the lawn, no one else will.
7. You can’t stay up all night eating bon bons and watching bad tv unless you want to be fat and out of a job.
8. A steady diet of your favourite foods will also make you fat.
9. If you don’t buy milk, no one else will.
10. Friends from high school may lose touch with you, you can forget to go to the dentist for 5 years, you can put of your yearly physical for ages, but Visa will always find you.
11. When the drain is plugged, you either have to buy Drano or take it apart and clean it out (EW! – I shed like a long haired dog – it was awful) but if you don’t do it, that’s right! No one else will.
12. Scary sounds in the middle of the night must be investigated by you if you want to sleep. And sure, it usually turns out that a piece of paper is too close to the air vent, and it’s making a ruckus, but you won’t sleep until you know for sure!
13. When a light goes on on your dashboard, or your car is making funny sounds, you will be the one that has to a) figure it out and take it to the mechanic, paying for it with your first born or b)you will have to take it to the mechanic, make the sound for them [because the car will refuse to be broken then] they will figure it out and you will be paying for it with your first born.
14. Dog pees, throws up, eats shoes, eats tub of margarine . . . it doesn’t really matter. It’s all you!
15. You will start to care about things like taxes, elections, politics, oil prices, hard winters, dry summers, frozen pipes, retirement plans, interest rates, mortgage rates, market values, leaky basements and crime in your city. They are all boring and no fun. It doesn’t matter. You still have to care.

They always say youth is wasted on the young [who are ‘they’ and how do ‘they’ know so much!]. Youth isn’t wasted on the young. If someone made you 10 again tomorrow and took your memory away, you wouldn’t do it any differently. You couldn’t. You would still be dreaming of filling your wallet with cards and vowing that when you grew up, there was gonna be pizza every night. You wouldn’t be thinking, “Thank God I don’t have to pay Income Tax! Visa kiss my A$$!’ You’d be saying to yourself, “Mum and Dad totally don’t understand me! When I grow up, I’m gonna ride my bike anywhere I want. I’m gonna be the only boss of me. And there will always be Double Stuffed Oreos in the house and if don’t want to eat veggies, I won’t!”

And really, would you want it any other way?

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One comment on “

  1. Heidi

    Bravo! She’s unblocked!

    I laughted by butt off, you are so right!

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