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I remember at the age of eight standing on an inverted trashcan and marveling at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. In a matter of seconds, I had added an extra foot and a half to my height.
I will be this tall, I thought, when I grow up.
Now, at fifty-one, my cranium hits the ruler at 5 feet 9, with my shoes touching the floor. And with adulthood come the perks that I dreamed of every time someone said, "You're just a kid."
Sure, being a grown-up has its liabilities (mortgage payments and prostate exams come to mind), but there are times when the glass is definitely half-full. May I present to you my ten dividends of adulthood:
ONE: I can stay up as late as I want. Whereas my parents used to say, "It's time for bed," my wife now speaks the words "It's 11 o'clock" or "You have to get up early." Ha. What are you going to do, Honey? Confine me to our bedroom? Yeah!
TWO: I can buy anything I want. I no longer have to gaze at my mom with Bambi eyes and ask if I can have that. I simply pull out my wallet and check my cash outlay. If there's not enough, I dig deeper and come up with my credit card, which allows me to have that at 18 per cent interest. I use my Bambi eyes weeks later when I hold the VISA bill in my hand.
THREE: I can eat anything I want. Menus that would have had my mother putting her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face are now beyond her jurisdiction. Recently, I called Mom one morning. "Guess what I'm having for breakfast," I gloated. "Cold pizza and a frosty can of Diet Coke. Stop me."
FOUR: Anything on television is my oyster. This was not so when I shared TV time with my parents. If I wanted to watch My Favorite Martian, they got to watch Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Now when my 12-year-old son sits in front of the tube, watching a collection of Warner Brothers cartoons, I announce that I'm changing the channel... right after I see what Bugs does with that anvil.
FIVE: I don't have to cut my hair if I don't want to. My father had this arrangement with our neighborhood barber: "I don't care how long he wants it, I want him looking like a marine." This was when long hair made the girls swoon and the World War II vets puke. My father, rest his soul, is no longer with us, and neither is the vast shock of hair that adorned my scalp. I must confess I've had thoughts about letting the sides of my hair grow long and combing the strands over the top of my head. I think I've become my father.
SIX: Besides being an adult, I'm also a teacher, which definitely puts me at the top of the grown-up chain. As an elementary student, I had to freeze every time the end-of-recess bell rang. Now when the bell sounds I keep walking. Sometimes I'll have a spring in my step as I pass students who resemble the salty remnants of Lot's wife. It's times like this that I recognize the importance of a university education.
SEVEN: I don't have to eat my vegetables. Actually, this perk is somewhat moot because now I rather like the stuff, even with asparagus at $1.75 a pound.
EIGHT: I no longer have to play stupid kid games: irritating girls I had crushes on, accepting outlandish dares (jumping off a roof into a swimming pool comes to mind), and keeping my true thoughts to myself. Now, I play mature games: irritating my wife, accepting outlandish dares (consuming my fifth beer comes to mind), and keeping my true thoughts to myself so as not to lose my "politically correct" classification.
NINE: I can drive a car. I'm no longer confined to driving the little cars at Disneyland. In fact, I can drive to Disneyland -- when the freeways are not clogged with other adult drivers.
TEN: When I was a student, any paragraph I wrote in class had to be five sentences long and could not contain run-on sentences. As you can see, this paragraph has only two sentences and if I want to make it really long then all I have to do is keep typing and stop when I'm damn well ready but I'm not quite finished and boy this feels better than the two years of therapy I went through.
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