Grownup?

Tonight I hung out with my good friend Laura, and we decided to grab some dinner at Applebee's and then go to the 8:30 showing of "Knocked Up." (Sorry if those quotes are out of place, Bethany.) We had some time between dinner and the movie so we wandered around Meijer's and played with the appliances.

I dawned on me recently that in approximately a year I'm actually going to be a real, live on-my-own grownup, and that I might actually need things like non-stick skillets and those mini grill sandwich cooker things. And I thought to myself, "Geez, how do people get all this stuff?" And then it occurred to me that they get married and register for everything at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Man, how unfair is it that people who are getting married get all this free stuff and I'm getting unceremoniously shooed out of the nest with a hand-me-down toaster oven from my grandma?

Of course it's not just about toaster ovens. It's about not experiencing the unspoken initiation into adulthood. It seems as if only after I get married will my parents say, "Ok, now we won't look at you sideways when you pour yourself a glass of wine, and there is no way you're sitting at the kid's table at Christmas."

I'm fine with being single, and frankly kind of excited to be able to do whatever I want to after graduation. But life just feels goofy and undefined right now, and I'm wondering whether I'm destined to walk the blurry line between youth and adulthood until I tie the knot...or turn 40.