How To Be a Grown Up

This recent past of the last few years this side of the new millennium, well it witnessed me as the 'kid'. Most places I went, the baby tag has stuck. And while the condescension tends to get annoying, on the whole it was proving to be an enjoyable experience. So much so, that I have often been accused, and not always without reasons, of suffering from the Peter Pan Syndrome.


Lately however, my belief in fairies has been diminishing and Neverland means a ranch kids should never have entered. It cannot no longer be denied that I am growing up. I loathe it; I fight it tooth and nail, I throw tantrum and I hold my breath. But it is inevitable, grow up I must. As there isn't much else I can do, I decided why not crib about it; and while I was at it why not get a few peopleto  hear it? So after this long and drawn preamble, let's get to what I am really here for: The X things (am not sure how many points am going to have) that tell you you're a grown up.


1. You get to make your own decisions: 
Yeaaeee!! I am now my own king (or queen in my case; actually let's just go with a gender neutral term) ... so ... yeaeee!!! I am now my own ruler. Wait, there's the mouseprint, it reads: your mess, you clean it up, it seems to include your room, your dishes, your laundry and your life(!).


2. You get to go on unchaperoned dates:
Oh Boi! Ever since I'd been a  thirteen year old hormones crazed teen flicks junkie, all I wanted to do was go on a real date. Forget Mom driving you and neighbour's cute son to McDonald's for a softy or making mud cakes together in the yard, this is the real deal. The candlelight, the sweet nothings, the perfect dress. The dress for which you have survived on cucumber juice all week and still had to hold your breath to get into; the dress your date probably already started taking off in his head when he saw you.


3. The loads of stuff learnt as a kid, you get to unlearn some of that junk:
Not the useful stuff like Bernoulli's principle, the 12 times table you can use the calculator on your phone for or the value of pie up to 5 decimal points. You just unlearn things that don't matter like one can kiss an ouchie go away, that "my daddy strongest" and he'll slay all my monsters; that running to mommie can still may not solve your problem, but it will make you feel better enough to face it.


4. You grow to be a wise, rational, thinking being:
It makes you understand the world so much better, like the fact that Santa Claus is in fact a marketing myth birthed by coke and there is no point being good. Or that an eye for an eye makes the world blind, so you cannot really punch your neighbour for borrowing your hand blender and returning it in pieces; even at the cost of refusing yourself a sense of great satisfaction.


5. You develop a sense of self preservation:
You know now that shiny, glowy flame is hot, you shouldn't touch it. You know ice creams in the rain give you bad throats, and you just can't play with anybody you want to. You know you don't show what you feel and you know you should marry successful men, they are better suited to support the family. Wow!! you are less likely to get hurt, fall ill, screw up your life, live it or enjoy it; sounds frabjuous. 


What was I thinking, hating growing up?! And whatever could Peter Pan have meant by "If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up. Not me! Not I, not me!"
Go figure all ye wise, old people.