Thirtysomething

Every now and then, a friend will make some comment that triggers something in me, or I'll hear something come out of my own mouth that I never thought I'd say, and I'll have this sudden, unexpected, "Woah. Yep. Definitely a grown-up now." moment.

Sometimes it's as simple as being out of touch with certain segments of pop culture that I choose not to keep up with. "Who the hell is Chingy"? and "I really can't name a single Alicia Keys song" are two sentences I've uttered that quickly come to mind. On Monday morning, I saw a headline on CNN's home page announcing that a mob of teenage girls had stormed the stage and caused a performance to be canceled at a mall less than ten miles from my house. I clicked through to the article and announced to a nearby co-worker, "I have never heard of this band. I have no idea who they are, but they look about 12."

On other occasions, the "Adulthood is obvious" moment comes when I recognize emerging disparities between my friends' lives and my own. Post-college, we all started on essentially equal ground. We all had crappy generic apartments, drove used cars, made adequate but not exciting incomes, and mocked our parents. As we get older, the gap in certain areas grows wider. We all now have houses (and, in most cases, better cars), but some of us* have become financially secure enough to jet off on a transcontinental vacation with little advance planning or budgeting. When did that happen? I don't generally mock my parents anymore (well, not much, anyway), but I don't hang out with them, either. My more-grown-up-than-me** friends do. Why? These are the things that I don't understand, but that I'm coming to realize are apparently the norm.

Recently a friend of mine told me that she and her husband have been seeing a fertility specialist to try to determine why they've been unable to conceive. I know it's the wrong reaction, but all I could think was, "Wow. And all that money wasted on years of unnecessary birth control." Wasn't it just last week that all my girlfriends were freaking out about what they'd do if they got pregnant? Now they're worried about why they aren't?

It's like suddenly my friends are living in an episode of Thirtysomething, but I'm still on Sex & the City. (Minus the sex. And the Manolo Blahniks. And in a slightly less fabulous city.)

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* Not me.
** i.e., married