Accidental Adulthood

Accidental Adulthood

Today I realized that I'm a grown up.

It's October 28. You'd have thought I would have run into this realization long before now. I've been paying bills for almost a year and a half, thirteen months of it as the husband of a wife. I've finished paying off college, my first car, and my living room furniture.

At 23 I'm the advertising manager of a national company with national awards under my belt, and I'm almost too old for the draft. There isn't a draft, but my mom and wife are glad that I'm almost too old for the draft.

I drove past work on the way home from church today and thought, "That's where I work." I've driven past the shoe store, the golf course, and the library before—places I earned my college tuition money. Today, it was a different, "That's where I work." Today it hit me more like when your mom tells you why you can't go where Daddy goes after breakfast. "He has to go to a place where he does grown-up things. You know like drink coffee."

I don't drink coffee. Lots of grown-ups there do, though; and I can see why Mom avoided trying to define the whole career thing in all its ambiguity.

It's the weekend. Actually, it's Sunday.

I went to Sunday School and church. Dad didn't wake me up with his call up the stairs, but he didn't in college either. I wore a blue blazer with gold buttons; the song leader probably got his at Penneys, too. I used to think that only AARP ushers and toddler grandsons of Methodists wore navy blazers.

Yet there I was in a navy blazer—singing the bass line, because tenor is too high for me. I remember thinking in junior high that all males progressed toward the voice of James Earl Jones. Well, at forty my dad was halfway there. It made sense. And James Earl Jones probably owns a navy blazer.

After a scout of the afternoon's football games, I resumed content work on my first book. In high school I told myself I'd be a writer or graphic designer when I grew up.

I had my reference books out, as well as my project folder. They sat next to the 1921 typewriter on the coffee table, as I pecked out chapter 6 on the laptop. I wasn't thinking about aesthetically-fulfilled prophecy, just that I needed to figure out what would go on the two pages at hand.

I looked up at Crystal varnishing one of her award-winning paintings and realized that she was my wife.

She's been my wife ever since our beautiful beach wedding and especially since the honeymoon. I've folded her underwear and gone grocery shopping with her. We share a bed and most of the blankets. But today I figured out who she was—like I had amnesia and they brought me home to trigger memories that might bring me back to normalcy.

This is normalcy now, I guess. I don't remember the accident. I remember seeing teenage girls and wondering what my wife would look like. I thought God would tell me when I was ready, and I would just know her like a guy knows a wife. I thought she would look like the brunette in the LL Bean catalog from which we never ordered. Only I thought she'd come with two Chesapeake Bay Retrievers and a red-plaid picnic blanket—a package deal. Maybe she was the someday replacement for our UPS guy. "Hey, are you Ryan? An order from . . . LL Bean . . . Sign right here. I'm Stephanie, and yes, I'll marry you."

I thought that I'd marry a Stephanie, a Sarah, or a Jennifer. My freshman year at college I dated a Stephanie and thought she was God's will because her name matched the UPS name tag. She dumped me; but as it turns out, my wife's two bridesmaids were named Sarah and Jennifer.

I married a Crystal. She has blonde hair and nothing in her wardrobe from any outdoor catalog. I think the dogs come only with the brown truck; and since we have a black sports car, I don't think we'd want tire pee-ers anyway.

I don't remember ordering, though. I remember classes and dinner dates. I remember buying a rock, writing some poetry, and giving Swiss Army knives to my groomsmen. Somewhere in there I signed something. I called UPS; they said it was an overnight package. No joke.

So, I have a wife. "Honey—Crystal, right? Do we have kids?"

"No, goofy."

"Did—we—before the accident?"

"What acci—Ryan, you're scaring me."

Yeah, I scare me, too. I'm on the verge of my twenty-fourth birthday, and I'm still fascinated by the goateed face in the mirror. It's me. I don't feel the hair on my face. As a kid, I thought it would make me talk funny—trying to move my mouth without feeling the itch. And drinking the milk out of the cereal bowl would be tricky, too.

But grown-ups didn't drink out of cereal bowls in front of kids. It's a good thing the nice blonde lady said we don't have any. "When do husbands and wives get kids?" I asked.

"Overnight, usually," Crystal answered, "Depends on if they're in stock."

"Have we ordered any?"

"No, but if you don't order by thirty, you don't get two for the price of one. But your dad said it doesn't cost any more to add one later; I wouldn't worry about it."

My book chapter in progress discussed the life of Abraham and Sarah. She didn't get her kid until she was ninety years old. I figured that was before UPS had trucks and the whole Internet tracking thing. They were adults long before they had begotten—I mean, got that shipment. So, it's possible for me to be an adult before having kids.

My wife says it's actually a prerequisite. She tells all the asking adults, "We'll start having kids, when this one grows up." It's like kids are a senior-level class, and I'm a sophomore adult major.

My new—or new to me—life is starting to make sense. I guess, having not yet chased my Masters, I've never thought school was over. (And everyone knows graduation is the prerequisite for adulthood.) So, if I postpone grad school to, say, 2030, there's a chance I could defend my doctoral thesis with the voice of Verizon.