The short answer:

Yes, eventually.

The long answer:

There’s a deleted scene from the American version of The Office that goes something like this. It’s Take Your Daughter to Work Day, and Pam, receptionist and aspiring artist, is working when Abby, one of the guests of honor, notices a sketch on her desk.

Abby: Did you draw that?
Pam: Yes, do you draw?
Abby: I want to be an artist when I grow up.
Pam (excited): Me too!
Abby: You are grown-up.
Abby abruptly walks off, leaving Pam a bit stunned.

For some reason, adults are always fascinated by what kids want to be when they grow up. This never made sense to me, since, let’s face it, everyone wants to be a doctor or astronaut or ballerina or insurance claims adjuster when they grow up. And the question makes growing up seem so easy, as if when you turn 21, they give you a pill containing some sort of Human Growth Hormone (HGH), and then the next day, poof, you’re a grown-up. It’s not that easy, of course. There’s no such thing as HGH, and even if there were, it wouldn’t come in a pill or be secreted by the anterior pituitary gland.

I certainly didn’t feel like a grown-up at all during high school, and I didn’t think anyone else did either. Then came graduation. The valedictory speech was annoyingly wayward and convoluted, so I don’t remember much about it except that at one point, she posed the question of when it happened that we all grew up. “When did we stop thinking of ourselves as boys and girls and start thinking of ourselves as men and women?” she asked, matter-of-factly. I guess I must have been sick that day, because I didn’t consider myself to be a man or woman. Was I the only one in the class who hadn’t yet grown up? I considered asking the guy next to me what he thought, but he was probably too busy thinking grown-up thoughts while cleaning out his ear with his tassel to listen to a kid like me.

Now that I’ve been out of college for awhile, does that make me a grown-up? Even though I satisfy the minimum age requirement, I still don’t feel like one. One time a few months ago, I was in the cereal aisle of the supermarket trying to decide what kind to buy. When I was little, my favorite cereal had always been Lucky Charms, but do grown-ups eat cereals with cartoon mascots? Certainly not! So I picked up a box of Frosted Mini-Wheats instead. Some day, I thought, I’ll be ready for Grape-Nuts.

I’m not sure what I thought being a grown-up would feel like. Does it have to do with the ability to do whatever I want? Today I got up at noon, ate a bowl of cereal, and then surfed the Internet for a couple hours, yet for some reason I don’t feel as if this makes me more of a grown-up. (Tomorrow I’ll get up at one and report back.) Does it have to do with having my future planned out? If so, then I guess I’m not quite a grown-up yet, but I’d hate to grow up one day and feel like I’m on a one-way street somewhere terrible, like nowhere or death or Florida.

Maybe I shouldn’t be too concerned with growing up. Maybe it is one of those things that happens without you realizing. I have definitely grown since high school and college, but I’m not sure I could quantify exactly when or how. Maybe it is sort of like I thought it would be when I was little, that one day someone will have slipped too much HGH into my cereal, and I’ll just wake up and feel like a grown-up. And maybe one day I’ll be a grown-up, and I’ll think to myself, I wish I could have been a kid a little bit longer.

I suppose that means I’ll grow up eventually, but exactly when is anyone’s guess. Until then, I have a lot of Lucky Charms to eat.

Cheers,
-qm