There’s nothing like young adulthood. We’re too old to have elders reprimand us for eating cake for breakfast, yet too young to get all up in arms come tax season.
But every once in awhile, something comes along and reminds us of two unavoidable truths. 1. We all grow older, and 2. We really are our parents’ children. Here are some tell-tale signs you're 20 going on 55.
1. You hold your phone the “old people” way.
When you grip your phone with one hand and touch the screen with the index finger of your other, like you have never held a “contraption” like it before, you might as well get right with Jesus right then and there. The end times are coming.
2. The grocery store isn’t the playpen it used to be.
There was a time when heading to Giant just meant begging your parents for sugary cereal and riding inside the shopping cart. But now that you actually PAY for your food, the whole experience has become a lot more about speed and efficiency. If any of your roommates want anything from the store, they better speak now or forever hold their peace. Because once you step out of that place, you’re not going back in.
3. Your purse is big and bottomless.
You start carrying everything but the kitchen table in your purse. Lotion, bandages, cough drops, pepper spray, brown lipstick, omega-3 oil supplements, cranberry juice, Hillary Clinton’s emails, Narnia, a shake weight, Karl Marx’s Communist manifesto. Yup, the gang’s all there.
4. Nagging is your middle name.
You start pestering your younger siblings about their dirty rooms, inappropriate clothing and disappointing grades, then weirdly start threatening to spank them for it as if you even have that kind of authority.
5. According to you, there IS something to eat.
Remember when you looked inside your parents’ fridge and swore up and down that the thing was empty? Yeah, so not the case anymore. While your younger siblings cry over the next great famine, you see a multitude of culinary possibilities, not to mention a bunch of leftovers that still need eating.
6. People expect you to cook for them.
Your siblings ask you expectedly, “What’s for dinner?” and you laugh hysterically before replying, “Honey, whatever you make.” Since when do people start looking to you for like, meals and stuff?
7. You call people “honey.”
When terms of endearment (that are targeted towards people who aren’t even your boyfriend) are like, a thing to you now, something is definitely up.
8. Sometimes you lose your "mojo."
A random stranger hits on you at the mall, which immediately prompts you to think, “Mhmm, I still got it,” even though you’re only 20 years old and by definition, never really lost “it.”
9. You’re kind of corny.
Some time in between the "nae nae" and the "quan", you stopped being able to pull off any new dance move. But out of resentment, you do them anyway because some time in between the "nae nae" and "the quan," second-hand embarrassment also became your everything.
10. You spend way too much time at the thrift store.
You don’t even buy ‘80s/’90s garments in efforts to DIY them later. You will literally buy “mom jeans” and think nothing of it.
11. Whoopi Goldberg’s your best friend in your head.
You have the daytime morning show television lineup down pat, and can DVR “The View,” “Dr. Oz” and “The Price is Right” like nobody’s business.
12. Shopping catalogues fulfill you in a way food, sex and riches could never.
When you flip through home decor magazines, it brings you child-like joy to the point where Home Depot’s paint swatch section is seriously your happy place. And if that’s so wrong, you don’t want to be right.
Hey, but before you get your granny panties in a bunch, take a deep breath and acknowledge that when your mom isn't being so cringe-worthy, you have to admit, she's kind of the best person you know. Your sneaky little metamorphosis may be some next-level "adulting" no one ever prepared you for. But look at it this way: you're already aging like fine wine.
