Like many of you reading this, I am a college student on track to a rewarding career. I am an independent individual, driving places by myself, working to pay for school, having an engaging social life, good friends, and taking college courses at the university level. I make my own decisions, pay for my own things, and I am a model citizen and an active member of my community. And yet, despite all these hoity-toity mature competences, I have never, in nearly two decades of human existence, ever felt like an adult.

I’ve been watching Saturday morning cartoons ever since I could talk. I still wish I could eat ice cream for every meal. I fight with my siblings and get frustrated when I don’t get my own way. My bed is covered with pink blankets and tons of stuffed animals. My bookshelf is filled with comic books and children’s stories. I get bored easily and sometimes just randomly break out a box of Crayola crayons just because I can. And just ten minutes ago I went downstairs to the kitchen because my mom baked chocolate chip cookies and I wanted one hot out of the oven.

So really, I’ve never had an experience when I’ve recognizably crossed the threshold between child and adult. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never really had to. I can fake a cordial handshake, dress in business casual, and make polite dinner conversation, but once I take off that façade I’m back to being me. Maybe it’s because I’m still a teenager – maybe I’ll feel more like an adult when I’m twenty.

Or maybe not.

Perhaps I’ll feel like an adult when I’ve finished college. Finished with school, got my own place, my own life, sounds pretty adult-ish to me, right? But I have the feeling that I’ll still have my insatiable appetite for vanilla ice cream, no matter how old I get.

Maybe I’ll be an adult when I’m fifty. That’s pretty old, isn’t it? Got my own house, a family maybe, a 401k (whatever that is)? But I somehow know that my childish affections for Hello Kitty will remain.

Maybe, just maybe I’ll feel like an adult much later in life. Perhaps on my deathbed, with my family gathered around me in inconsolable mourning, I’ll feel like I’ve lived my adult life without regrets. I’ll have accomplished all I’ve wanted to do and seen all I’ve wanted to see. With all my affairs in order, I take my final breath. But one thing is nagging at me. It’s not the fear of the unknown, the morbid worry of how my family will cope without me. Not the frantic wondering if I could have done more with my life. Not the terror at all the unaccomplished dreams I’ve left on earth. No, I feel that not even the chronic fear of death will tear me from my final thought:

“Did I forget to watch cartoons this morning?”