I HATE BEING A GROWN UP

Title brought to you by Jenna Marbles’ song of the same name.

I had one of those “Holy shit, I’m an adult” moments this week. It was Sunday evening. I was relaxed and happy and writing something that was going really well and having a glass of pinot grigio. It was time to eat. I turned the oven on.

POP!

SPARK!

And then all the lights started going weird and half turning on and half not turning on and that was kind of unnerving but as soon as I was sure that the spark hadn’t ignited an actual fire, I regrouped and did exactly what one should do in a situation like this:

I called an adult.


“Um...Auntie? I have an electrical issue.”

“Uncle, come talk to your niece! I can’t field this one.”

“Niece! Did the switch flip?”

“No, Uncle, the switch did not flip.”

“Flip all the switches.”

“The switches are making it weirder, Uncle.”

“Oh. Then please call Handyman Dave.”


So I did. Handyman Dave happened to be a couple of blocks away and popped over to take a look. Without his usual tools (he had just been at dinner with friends, bless him, and wasn’t in his work truck), his initial diagnosis was, “You have a gremlin. Can I come back tomorrow?”

And come back tomorrow he did. I won’t bore you to death with the technical details, but we found the source of the problem which was the breaker on the meter itself, not inside my unit, and the fact that my range went entirely tits up.

Now I have to go shopping for appliances.

Okay, one appliance. But still. That’s such an adult thing to have to do. On the one hand, it’s kind of fun, because SHINY NEW THING! On the other, it’s a pain, because I’ll have to find a deal that includes delivery and haul-away of the old one because I don’t have easy access to a truck. On the plus side, it’s getting toward the holidays, so everyone is having sales. On the not-so-plus side, that means that everyone and their mother is going to be buying appliances. Thank goodness for the Internet!

Also thank goodness for DoorDash, because my only cooking option for the foreseeable future is the microwave…or a strict diet of cereal.

But back to being a grown up. A thing at which I succeed, but do not excel. And I only enjoy it some of the time. And at the moment...well, that’s not exactly true. I don’t not enjoy it right now, it’s just a bit irritating. There are a lot of people who support the idea of what we’ll call ‘common sense classes’ (for lack of a better term) in high school, and I am definitely one of them. Teach kids how to balance checkbooks and track their finances. Teach them about how mortgages work. Teach them how to do their taxes. Teach them how to change a tire, and a fuse, and what a breaker box is and what to do with the switches inside it when something happens. Teach CPR and basic first-aid. Teach them the simple mechanics of a ballcock array, how to unblock a u-bend, what and where the emergency shutoff valves are for common household water sources. These are the points of knowledge that a great number of people manage to achieve adulthood without, and they’re significantly more important to everyday life than how to solve quadratic equations.

ALGEBRA DOESN’T DO YOU ANY GOOD WHEN YOUR TOILET IS OVERFLOWING.

Oh, and here’s another novel idea, how about we force kids to learn to read actual physical paper maps? Because when North Korea pushes the red button and every technological everything ceases to function, there’s going to be a whole pile of youngsters who have no idea how to get home. (I mean, if they can get home at all.) Or how to cook three simple, cheap, healthy meals, so that they have them in rotation when they move out? They’ll still eat nothing but pizza and Hostess cupcakes, but at least you’ll know they can eat some real food if they want, or cook something marginally impressive for their girlfriends.

Funnily enough, I actually had a moment about my complete disinterest in cooking with Handyman Dave.

“Wait, what?! A Fazzio who doesn’t cook?”

Oh, I can. And I have. And I’m sure I will again.

But that requires being a grown up.

And I hate being a grown up.