"I TOTALLY get why Michael slept in the bed with little boys."

Being an adult sucks. And not just because you have to work and pay bills. You also have to make hard decisions. Hard decisions suck. Hard decisions are life changing.  When faced with hard decisions, I tend to get really pissed off at the adults in my life. Who thought it was a good idea to hand over to me control of my life?  Do they not remember the time I rubbed Country Crock on my boobs because Sophia Hubbard told me that would make them grow whole shaving my eyebrows off with toothpaste and a Bic single blade incident? Or what about the time I spent the night away from home and cried so hard my parents had to come get me from cheerleading camp-my grown butt was in high school... HIGH SCHOOL!!! ? More recently, what about the time I VOLUNTARILY told the federal auditor that the official record keepers were missing important files?

As I sit here fiddling with the aluminum foil gun I made for the nights that I pretend I am a CIA agent, I realize that I am not ready to be an adult. What happened to my childhood? For as long as I can remember, I have known too much. I have breathed too heavy.  I have cried too often. In the back of my mind are shredded memories of failures, insecurities, doubts and uncertainties. I look back and see the skinny little girl who never thought she was quite enough. Not quite as pretty, not quite as smart, not quite as funny... always a not quite. The parents did what any awesome parents could do. Mommy was full of encouragement and flattery. Daddy was always willing to share an awkward stiff hug and the last bite of his ice cream sandwich.

Still, my youth escaped me. Innocence left me long before the ability to deal with the evils of this world joined me. My younger years can easily be described as one big adventure in making bad decisions- decisions I didn't fully grasp the magnitude of.

Now that I am older and at an age where I should be maturing, I find myself fighting harder than ever against the progression.  The old soul I've been told I have, which once made the old folks stop and whisper now just makes strangers stop me on the street and tell me to smile. If you are as young as you feel, then I need  a diabetic shoe, a new wardrobe from the Alfred Dunner section, and some ginseng. I feel robbed that now that I have finally found a bit of confidence, finally getting to know who I am, finally getting comfortable with my skin- after all this, NOW you want me to grow up? NOW you want me to be responsible? NOW, after years of handling big life with kid gloves...*deep sigh*.

Now, I totally get why Michael Jackson slept in the bed with little boys. Yes, it was justifiable grounds for molestation charges inappropriate, but that's what happens when your life cycle gets switched. Michael was born a grown man and died a sad little boy. He just wanted to play. He just wanted to stay up past his bedtime and eat ice cream on an empty stomach.  He wanted to play with boys who were mentally his own age. Macaulay Culkin didn't want to negotiate royalties and analyze album sales. Macaulay just wanted to pet the monkeys. No pun intended.

I don't want to wear slacks or "hold my own" against stuffy old suits with lots of letters and punctuations behind their names. I don't want to worry about whether or not I'm putting enough into my 401K. I don't want to explain to him why I need a title.

I just want to play. Has anyone seen my childhood? I just want to be a kid. Why didn't the adults make me be a kid?

At what point do they quit expecting you to show up for work?

I woke up this morning feeling very much like I do every weekday morning- full of loathe and contempt for my job. And just like every weekday morning, I spent 20 minutes, after the third and last time that I hit snooze on my alarm, recalculating the amount of sick leave I had left, mentally sifting through my unanswered emails from the past couple of weeks days, and visualizing my to do list and the incredibly important, life-changing tasks on it. *Deep Sigh*  Dammittahell! Work wins again :(.