The Fly On The Wall presents

the fly on the wall presents...

entry 3: march 31, 2006

dedicated to the twenty-somethings

in less than 24 hours, i will officially have lived twenty-three years on this great earth. and it is on this special day that we tend to reflect on where we stand as participants in this life, a status-to-date if you will.

my vital signs read stable: recent college grad (beep) living on my own (beep) thousands of miles away from the perpetually rainy city i called home (still do...fresh air trumps palm trees...beep).

stable. so i thought.

i’m also broke (beep) broke (beep..beep) broke (beeeeeeep...). oh i know what you’re saying, me too! me too! ¡yo también! (sé).

but i can’t help but wonder, in a hypothetical situation where i am eleven months out of college, standing right around the corner from the big 2-3, can i write a check for a pack of trident (passion fruit) gum at corner store and feel grown? can i half-jokingly invite my friends to a birthday dinner at ihop while secretly hyping myself up for unlimited pancakes because...i’m half-joking, and feel grown?

hypothetically.

the obsession with being grown, or the perception of being grown, has weighed on my mind since my early twenties (ok, earlier twenties). and then by your mid-early twenties, you have the added pressure of being grown and sexy? i’m sorry if, on my birthday (which happens to be the dreaded and glorious 1st of the month), i choose to submit my check to beverly* the landlady than hand it over to the cashier lady at the beverly center. (although, to be fair, a new fit could serve as a makeshift tent should i find myself evicted).

so in light of my mid-early-twenties-life crisis, i have come to the revelational understanding that being grown, it’s all relative.

amidst all these other recent grads in my life, i’ve witnessed the sally, jesse and raphael’s of my generation on the path to owning a house when the closest thing to a house that i own is a subscription to better homes and garden .

is it then that the jamie, lee and curtis’ of the world, on the grind everyday and have only a claim to their mother’s magazine subscription to show for it (so, i lied!) any less grown? i need no answers.

i need no validation.

i simply turn to Einstein, who’s Special Theory of Relativity is summarized as such: “different observers moving at different rates of speed will find that the laws of physics and the speed of light remain the same, even though they will have different perceptions of time and distance” (http://library.thinkquest.org/2890/relativ.htm).

so putting my COMM** degree to good use, this scientific evidence leads me to conclude that our perceptions of being grown are relative to the speed at which we are moving in life. on a very surface level, some seem to be reaching that point at an increasingly accelerated pace, while the rest of us are perceived to be at a standstill.

but not our bank accounts, our cars nor our birthday activities will dispel the fact (who dares to argue with Einstein?) that despite our perceptions of how we got there and how long it took, it remains that we are here now.

grown.
sexy.
and in less than 24 hours, celebrating another year on this great earth, proudly declaring, “YES! i would like hashbrowns with my pancakes”...(what?).


*names have been changed to protect my rent-controlled apartment
**the fly is not trained in the sciences...contrary to popular belief.