Sunday Scribbling (on Sunday, even!) #177: Adult
Adult was not:Registering for the draft.
Changing majors.
Co-directing the student counseling crisis hotline.
Summer interning at the juvenile detention center as a "social worker."
Opting out of the rush to graduate school.
Graduating in June 1975.
Working as a psych tech at Villa Rosa Psychiatric Hospital, September 1975 - January 1977.
Falling in love with a woman ten years my senior.
Moving to the country.
Learning to survey land.
Reading Gravity's Rainbow on a spring-splendored hilltop, while learning that craft.
Having a relationship with a married woman.
Marrying that previously married woman and stepfathering her beautiful four year old child.
Getting married, becoming a stepfather, starting graduate school all at the same time.
Buying the first house.
No, ADULT was buying the weedeater.
Labels: progressions
posted by murat11 at 7:27 AM
27 Comments:
Better be careful... I have it on good authority that a pair of tan sansabelt pants may try to ride in on the wake of that very first weedeater.
So "adult" is the boring bits of life, Murat? I don't think so...
made me giggle.
ADULT was buying the weedeater.
Snort. I'm gonna be laughing about that line into next week.
Anno: It took another 26 years to get to sansabelt. I must be meta-adult now.
Come now, Sister Teresa: Who ever said weedeaters were boring? Lemme 'splain: it's just that all those other supposed milestones never really imparted a sense of rite of passage to "adult." Not that they weren't momentous or wonderful (they were all that); but that weedeater purchase actually felt like I had walked through a portal.
QB: Glad to have registered on the QB giggle-meter. Hopefully, it wasn't a snarf attack.
Moise: Then my work here is done...
funny how life is just not that but something else entirely
Oh Murat, that's just so testosterone-filled male, I didn't get it the first time 'round.
A weed-eater digging poet with Gravity's Rainbow in one hand (and watch out world for the weedeater spinning wildly in the other???). Yes, that is a belly-laugh of an image!
hehe So what does it mean the Christmas I got excited about getting my very own drum sander and scroll saw???
I'm never growing up.
jsd: So true; probably a sermon on weedeaters lurking somewhere...
I like your image, Sister T: very Salvador Dali-esque. I like it for another reason, too: in those yesteryears, I had no clue that there might be a poet lurking in the mix...
Dee: It means you are way more adult than I'll ever be (or that you may already be working on your next incarnation). Of course, I must add that those two items break the Southern Belle rule of "tools or appliances do not count as gifts." But then, you were ever a rulebreaker (that's a compliment) and way more evolved than an SB.
Great. I loved the progression and the changing, shifting understanding of adult...the ending was funny and true.
Thank you, Lilibeth. Nice to see you again.
Rather poignant. It's always the small, unusual moments that have the greatest impact. I felt like a true adult the day I I.D.'d my girlfriend and discovered she was 10 years older than me. I had found it odd that she was talking about her 10 year highschool reunion when I was only 20...
It all sorta rushed in on me, then. I'm fully responsible for myself. Nobody was gonna tell me her age, and I had never thought to ask. It was really quite funny. Didn't hurt our relationship any, either... she taught me quite a bit about being a grown up, that crazy woman.
Asleeponmyfeet: I take your point (I certainly made it, too), but I don't know about greatest impact from the small, unusual. Marrying my wife eleven years ago in a stain of blue light through a stained glass window and watching my son emerge into the world - hardly small, but enormous impact. Still, I agree with you about the possibilities inherent in small moments, when we least expect, and life comes rushing through. Because they're not marked as such, they are potent for revelation.
Thanks for your visit and your thoughts.
Absolutely LOVED the last line! Somewhere down the road, I imagine him tossing the weedeater and putting the weedy dandelions in a vase.
So I guess what I'm saying is he may have become an adult when he bought the weedeater, but he'll become wise when he throws it away.
Rachel, Part 1: Thanks for your comment; I like the dandelion suggestion.
Rachel, Part 2: He did throw it away (he's thrown many things away) and I think it's safe to say that he's, if not wise, at least wiser.
Of course I love the Dylan accompanying this. Dude’s got such the style. A normal life yet not normal. Like yours, like everybody’s. Good to see a few things on your list that’d raise our grandparents’ eyebrows. I tend to think of you as being so intelligent you wouldn’t let your heart make what some might call a misstep. If I made a list like this, eyebrows would rarely lower. But you know no step is a misstep, really, just a place we needed to go to get to where we’re ultimately going: to weedeater heaven : )
That was full of punch! :) Well done!
Duchess: I'm a Scorpio, girl: I ain't no rationalist. I always lead with my heart and, as you well know, I've earned my share of demolition CEUs; this ditty was selective exhibitionism, before the weedeater. As for the grandparents, though - it's a level playing field: they may be inclined to arched eyebrows, but their debutantes know what they need, too.
DM: Welcome to the par-tay. Plenty punch left...
I like your "not adult" list, filled with many of life's milestones and wonder...if I buy a weedeater does that mean I have to use it?
Ooh, tough call, Ms P: howzabout renting it to me? I needs anutha...
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